From its interesting name, to its composition, discovery, and more!
Join me as we explore MakeMake: Facts and History!
9.
What Is MakeMake?
Given the rather odd name for the object, you'd be forgiven for not knowing exactly
what this entity is on its title alone.
It's a Dwarf Planet, and possibly one of the biggest in our solar system.
Along with fellow dwarf planets Pluto, Eris and Haumea, it is located in the Kuiper Belt,
a region outside the orbit of Neptune.
Slightly smaller than Pluto, Makemake is the second-brightest object in the Kuiper Belt
as seen from Earth (while Pluto is the brightest).
This particular dwarf planet holds an important place in the history of solar system studies
because it—along with Eris—was one of the objects whose discovery prompted the International
Astronomical Union to reconsider the definition of a planet and to create the new group of
dwarf planets.
Of which Pluto would be demoted from a full planet to a dwarf planet.
Leaving many to wonder what would've happened if this particular set of objects were never
discovered at all.
Would Pluto still be a planet today?
The dwarf planet was named after the Rapanui god of fertility.
If you don't know, these are the people who lived on Easter Island.
8.
The Discovery Makemake was discovered on March 31, 2005,
by a team at the Palomar Observatory, led by Michael E. Brown, and was announced to
the public in July of 2005.
The team had planned to delay announcing their discoveries of it and Eris until further observations
and calculations were complete, but announced them both on July 29 when the discovery of
another large object they had been tracking, Haumea, was controversially announced on July
27 by a different team in Spain.
There was a bit of a fight over this, but that's another story entirely.
Despite its relative brightness (it is about a fifth as bright as Pluto), Makemake was
not discovered until after many much fainter Kuiper belt objects.
Which no doubt struck the team finding it as odd, among other things.
Most searches for minor planets are conducted relatively close to the ecliptic (the region
of the sky that the Sun, Moon and planets appear to lie in, as seen from Earth), due
to the greater likelihood of finding objects there.
It probably escaped detection during the earlier surveys due to its relatively high orbital
inclination, and the fact that it was at its farthest distance from the ecliptic at the
time of its discovery, in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices.
Besides Pluto, Makemake is the only other dwarf planet that was bright enough that Clyde
Tombaugh could have detected it during his search for trans-Neptunian planets around
1930.
At the time of Tombaugh's survey, it was only a few degrees from the ecliptic, near the
border of Taurus and Auriga, at an apparent magnitude of 16.0.
This position, however, was also very near the Milky Way, and the dwarf planet would
have been almost impossible to find against the dense background of stars.
Tombaugh continued searching for some years after the discovery of Pluto, but he did not
find Makemake or any other trans-Neptunian objects.
Which is now very ironic due to all the various objects we've found in that area since Pluto.
Going to show that while the early astronomers were incredibly talented, they did have their
limits based on the technology that they wielded.
7.
Orbit As of April 2019, Makemake is 52.5 AU from
the Sun, almost as far from the Sun as it ever reaches on its orbit.
The dwarf planet follows an orbit very similar to that of Haumea: highly inclined at 29°
and a moderate eccentricity of about 0.16.
But still, its orbit is slightly farther from the Sun in terms of both the semi-major axis
and perihelion.
Its orbital period is 305 years approximately, more than Pluto's 248 years and Haumea's 285
years.
Both it and Haumea are currently far from the ecliptic (at an angular distance of almost
29°).
However, it is approaching its 2033 aphelion, whereas Haumea passed its aphelion in early
1992.
To put its orbit into context, a human life averages around 70-80 years, but there have
been many who have reached 100 or over, so for it to go around the sun once via its orbit
is like those people living three lifetimes.
Which would be quite a feat indeed.
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6.
Atmosphere Determining a planet's (or dwarf planet's)
atmosphere is a bit tricky to do depending on its distance.
This is why the search for Earth-like planets takes time because though we can find a planet
it can take time to truly dissect the ins and outs of the atmosphere because on pictures
and certain readings.
In terms of Makemake though, there was a sequence of events that allowed scientists to observe
it potential atmosphere.
Starlight of all things gave astronomers the best look yet at the dwarf planet and it appears
to be missing its atmosphere according to their findings.
Although this icy world currently lacks an atmosphere, there is still a chance it could
form one like a comet when it approaches the point in its orbit that is closest to the
sun, scientists added.
Though obviously that would be something that would have to be looked at via various technology
when the time comes to make sure that it does indeed happen.
Though this isn't a definitive thing, the team who made this discovery were thrilled
that they were able to make any confirmation at all.
"For me it is extremely remarkable that we can get an accurate knowledge of important
properties of these mysterious dwarf planets even though they are so far away from the
Earth," said lead study author Jose Ortiz, a planetary scientist at the Institute of
Astrophysics of Andalucía in Granada, Spain.
"Only three years ago we had never observed a single occultation by a trans-Neptunian
object, and now we have managed to observe 12 such events, nine of them by our international
team."
Getting back to the atmosphere, at most, Makemake's atmosphere is 80 million to 250 million times
thinner than Earth's at sea level, the researchers calculate.
Still, there might be patches of atmosphere overlying warmer regions on its surface, such
as dark patches that absorb more sunlight.
"We suspect that these dark patches might be concentrated near the latitude of the subsolar
point of the planet — the subsolar point is the point of the planet where the solar
rays reach the surface perpendicularly, and therefore cause the maximum heating possible,"
Ortiz said.
"These dark patches might form sort of a dark band in the planet."
You might wonder why such a thing is a "need to know" aspect of the dwarf planet, but think
about it in the large scale.
First and foremost, whether a dwarf planet has an atmosphere or not depends on various
factors.
So for this one to appear to either not have one, or have an incredibly thin one, is worth
the research itself.
Plus, if it does "act like a comet" and gain an atmosphere when it gets closer to the sun,
that is an event that will wield much information.
Every aspect of a planet or dwarf planet is important, especially if it's revealed that
it could be viable for a human colony of some kind, or any kind, in the future.
5.
Surface Spectral analysis of Makemake's surface revealed
that methane must be present in the form of large grains at least one centimeter in size.
In addition to methane, large amounts of ethane and tholins as well as smaller amounts of
ethylene, acetylene and high-mass alkanes (like propane) may be present, most likely
created by photolysis of methane by solar radiation.
The tholins are probably responsible for the red color of the visible spectrum.
Although evidence exists for the presence of nitrogen ice on its surface, at least mixed
with other ices, there is nowhere near the same level of nitrogen as on Pluto and Triton,
where it composes more than 98 percent of the crust.
The relative lack of nitrogen ice suggests that its supply of nitrogen has somehow been
depleted over the age of the Solar System.
Although the majority of it is covered by nitrogen and methane ices, where the albedo
ranges from 78 to 90%, there are small patches of dark terrain whose albedo is only 2 to
12%, and that make up 3 to 7% of the surface.
There has been much debate as to what these dark terrain spots are, including being shadows,
or something more unique.
They show some degree of variation in the spectral slope, which would be associated
with different abundance of the complex organic materials, byproduct of the irradiation of
the ices present on the surface.
However, the relative ratio of the two dominant icy species, methane and nitrogen, remains
quite stable on the surface revealing a low degree of inhomogeneity in the ice component.
These results have been recently confirmed when the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo acquired
new visible and near infra-red spectra for Makemake, between 2006 and 2013, that covered
nearly 80% of its surface; this study found that the variation in the spectra were negligible,
suggesting that Makemake's surface may indeed be homogenous.
4.
Its Name As you likely know, the names of planets,
dwarf planets, and moons in our solar system are most times named after gods and deities
across various pantheons.
So it might seem odd that this one looks like it's called Make-Make, when in fact, it's
not.
Before its "true name" was given, the discovery team used the codename "Easterbunny" for the
object, because of its discovery shortly after Easter.
How poetic.
In July 2008, in accordance with IAU rules for classical Kuiper belt objects, the dwarf
planet was given the name of a creator deity.
The name of Makemake, the creator of humanity and god of fertility in the myths of the Rapa
Nui, the native people of Easter Island, was chosen in part to preserve the object's connection
with Easter.
So you see?
It's name was not random, it's just from a pantheon you likely don't know by heart like
with the Greek and Roman gods that the other planets and dwarf planets and moons are mostly
named after.
3.
Moon Makemake has one provisional moon, S/2015
1 and nicknamed MK 2.
It is more than 1,300 times fainter than the dwarf planet.
MK 2 was seen approximately 13,000 miles from the dwarf planet, and its radius is estimated
to be about 50 miles (80 kilometers).
The Hubble discovery images suggest that MK 2 is as dark as charcoal, which seems surprising
given that Makemake is so bright.
One possible explanation is that the moon's gravity is too weak to hold onto reflective
ices, which sublimate off MK 2's surface into space, researchers said.
MK 2 was spotted in observations made by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in April 2015, after several
previous Makemake observation campaigns had failed to turn up any satellites.
"Our preliminary estimates show that the moon's orbit seems to be edge-on, and that means
that often when you look at the system you are going to miss the moon because it gets
lost in the bright glare of Makemake," Alex Parker of the Southwest Research Institute
(SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, who led the image analysis for the Hubble observations, said
in a statement.
Additional observations should also reveal the shape of MK 2's orbit around Makemake.
If the orbit is tightly circular, the moon was probably created by a long-ago giant impact,
just like the five satellites in the Pluto system were, researchers said.
A looping, elliptical orbit, on the other hand, would suggest that MK 2 was once a free-flying
Kuiper Belt object that Makemake captured.
What's curious about this is that given its size, you wouldn't expect a dwarf planet to
have a moon, yet many of them do.
Which again flies in the face of the "classification" of what it means to be a planet.
Because there are ones that don't have moons, and yet are still called planets, and thus
the debate continues over what it truly means to be a planet and whether the IAU are right
to label something as "not a planet" when it shares so many characteristics with other
planets.
2.
Formation Not unlike many other objects in the Kuiper
Belt, Makemake is believed to have been made about 4.5 billion years ago when the formation
of our solar system occurred.
The only question mark in this is that when you look at the dwarf planet, and you look
at the others like it you see a lot of differences as well as similarities.
And it raises a lot of questions as to how some of these dwarf planets were formed one
way, while others weren't.
Especially when you compare them to the thousands of other objects that are in the belt that
aren't their size.
Only future observation will lead us to more answers.
1.
Will We Ever Reach Makemake?
Obviously, just about every astronomer in the world would like to go and reach every
object that is out there in the solar system so that they can study it up close.
But, being as this particular dwarf planet is just beyond Neptune, our options of reaching
it are slim at present.
Even if we were to go and launch a satellite to go and study it and the other dwarf planets
it would take years to reach it.
That's not to say it won't happen, but for now, scientists and astronomers will just
have to make due with the technology we have and hope they can learn more about it from
Earth.
Thanks for watching everyone!
What did you think of this look at Makemake and the facts and history associated with
it Were you surprised by some of the facts that were presented?
Did you learn anything new from watching this video?
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