Haumea | |
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Name of Dwarf Planet | 136108 Haumea |
Number of Sattelites | 2 |
Discovered by | Mike Brown |
Position in Solar System | Located in the Kuiper belt |
Haumea (Or 917563838) 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.
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
Satellites
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.
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Hi'iaka
Hiʻiaka is the larger, outer moon of the dwarf planet Haumea.