Haumea

Haumea (Or 136108 Haumea) is a dwarf planet. It is known for its strange shape, because it spins so fast on it's axis that it flattens out into an elipsoid shape. It was discovered on December 28, 2004. It has two known moons called Hi'iaka and Namaka.

Discovery[]

Haumea's discovery is controversial. Two teams lay claim to the discovery: Michael Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz's team at Caltech, and Jose Luis Ortiz Moreno's team at a Spanish Observitory. The name Haumea was proposed by Brown's team, Ortiz's team proposed the name "Ataecina." Precovery images have been dated to March 22, 1955.

Name[]

Brown's team nicknamed it "Santa" when they found it because it was around Christmastime. Its provisional designation, 2003 El61, was given on July 29, 2005. Its number, 136108, was given on September 7, 2006. The name Haumea is the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth and fertility.

Physical Characteristics[]

Haumea is oval shaped, and the only dwarf planet that is not a spheroid, but a Jacobi Elippsoid. Such an oval shape sparks contriversy on its current status as a dwarf planet, but the IAU has not made any demotions yet.

Haumea is mainly rocky, with a thin coating of ice. It has a large spot that is red in color.

Rotation[]

Haumea rotates extremely fast; it's day is only 3.9 hours long. This is why it is so oval-shaped; it streches itself out.

Ring[]

A stellar occultation observed on 21 January 2017 and described in an 11 October 2017 ''Nature'' article indicated the presence of a ring around Haumea. This represents the first ring system discovered for a TNO. The ring has a radius of about 2,287 km, a width of ~70 km and an opacity of 0.5. It is well within Haumea's Roche limit, which would be at a radius of about 4,400 km if it were spherical (being nonspherical pushes the limit out farther). The ring plane approximately coincides with Haumea’s equatorial plane and the orbital plane of its larger, outer moon Hi’iaka. The ring is also close to the 3:1 resonance with Haumea's rotation (which is at a radius of 2,285 ± 8 km). The ring contributes around 5% to the total brightness of Haumea.

Past[]

Haumea was very different than it is today. It used to be round and half-ice, half rock, with no rings or moons. But then, an asteroid hit Haumea, knocking most of its ice off it. Those pieces became its moons, its rings, and distant TNOs (55636) 2002 TX300, (24835) 1995 SM55, (19308) 1996 TO66, (120178) 2003 OP32, and (145453) 2005 RR43.

The crash sped up Haumea's rotation, which streched it out into a Jacobi eley

Namaka[]

Namaka is the smaller, inner moon of the dwarf planet Haumea. It is named after Nāmaka, the goddess of the sea in Hawaiian mythology and one of the daughters of Haumea.

Hi'iaka[]

Hiʻiaka is the larger, outer moon of the dwarf planet Haumea.