Haumea

Lore & Background

Two teams claim credit for Haumea's discovery. Mike Brown's team discovered it on 28 December 2004 from images taken on 6 May 2004, and published an abstract in July 2005. Around the same time, José Luis Ortiz Moreno's team found it on images from March 2003 and emailed the Minor Planet Center on 27 July 2005. Brown initially conceded credit but later suspected fraud after learning the Spanish team had accessed his observation logs before their announcement. Ortiz admitted accessing the logs but denied wrongdoing. The IAU did not name a discoverer in its 2008 announcement, listing the Sierra Nevada Observatory as the location of discovery but adopting the Caltech-proposed name Haumea over Ortiz's proposal of Ataecina.

Reader's Guide

Haumea's significance lies in its status as a dwarf planet with unique physical characteristics: it is the fastest-rotating large equilibrium body in the Solar System, with a rotational period of 3.9 hours, and its shape is consistent with a Jacobi ellipsoid. In October 2017, astronomers announced the first ring system discovered around a trans-Neptunian object and dwarf planet. Its high albedo from crystalline water ice and its collisional family, which includes its two moons Hiʻiaka and Namaka, suggest a giant impact origin. The discovery controversy between the Caltech and Spanish teams highlights issues of credit and data access in astronomy. Haumea's orbit is thought to be in an intermittent 7:12 resonance with Neptune, and it is statistically likely to be ejected from the Solar System within a billion years.

Did You Know?

• Haumea was provisionally designated 2003 EL61 based on the date of the Spanish discovery image.
• Its ring system, discovered in October 2017, was the first found for a trans-Neptunian object and dwarf planet.
• Haumea's rotational period of 3.9 hours is faster than any other known equilibrium body in the Solar System.
• Precovery images of Haumea have been identified back to 22 March 1955.