Makemake
Dwarf planet · Kuiper Belt
Makemake is a reddish-brown dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt, covered in frozen methane and ethane. It is one of the brightest objects out there, but still far too faint to see without a big telescope.
- ~1,430 kmYou could line up 9 of them across Earth.
- ~305 yearsYear
- 1 (tiny and dark)Moons
Take a closer look
A star that blinked
In 2011, Makemake passed in front of a faint star, and astronomers watched closely. The star vanished and reappeared suddenly instead of fading slowly, which showed that Makemake has little or no global atmosphere. That makes it different from Pluto, which wraps itself in thin haze.
Weighing with a moon
Makemake’s small dark moon is a useful tool. By measuring how long a moon takes to circle its parent world and how far away it is, scientists can work out the parent’s mass. Once they pin down this moon’s orbit, they will be able to weigh Makemake.
Far, far away
Makemake is currently more than 50 times further from the Sun than Earth is, so sunlight takes around seven hours to reach it. Its surface is colder than −230 °C, so cold that methane – a gas on Earth – lies frozen on the ground like frost.
Size it up
You could line up 9 of them across Earth. Both are drawn to the same scale.
How we found out
- 2005
Discovered on 31 March by Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz, just after Easter – the team nicknamed it “Easterbunny”.
- 2008
Officially named after Makemake, the creator god of the people of Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
- 2016
Hubble discovers a tiny, very dark moon nicknamed “MK2”.
Why are distant icy worlds often reddish?
Sunlight and cosmic rays slowly change methane ice into dark reddish compounds called tholins.
See it yourself
Only with large telescopes.
From the encyclopedia
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