Makemake tagged posts

Webb telescope observes potentially young Methane deposits on surfaces of Eris, Makemake. A team co-led by Southwest Research Institute found evidence for hydrothermal or metamorphic activity within the icy dwarf planets Eris and Makemake, located in the Kuiper Belt. Methane detected on their surfaces has the tell-tale signs of warm or even hot geochemistry in their rocky cores, which is markedly different than the signature of methane from a comet.

“We see some interesting signs of hot times in cool places,” said SwRI’s Dr. Christopher Glein, an expert in planetary geochemistry and lead author of a paper about this discovery.

The Kuiper Belt is a vast donut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune at the edge of the solar syste...

This artist’s concept shows the distant dwarf planet Makemake and its newly discovered moon. Makemake and its moon, nicknamed MK 2, are more than 50 times farther away than Earth is from the sun. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Parker (Southwest Research Institute)

Peering to the outskirts of our solar system, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a small, dark moon orbiting Makemake, the second brightest icy dwarf planet – after Pluto – in the Kuiper Belt. The moon, S/2015 (136472) 1 and nicknamed MK 2 – is > 1,300X fainter than Makemake. MK 2 was seen approximately 13,000 miles from the dwarf planet, and its diameter is ~100 miles across. Makemake is 870 miles wide. The dwarf planet, discovered in 2005, is named for a creation deity of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island.

The Kuiper Belt ...