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Meet MK 2: The newly discovered moon of dwarf planet Makemake

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Searching the borders of our solar system, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a small, dark moon revolving about Makemake, the next most brilliant icy dwarf planet, after Pluto, in the Kuiper Belt.

Nicknamed MK 2, the newly-found moon is greater than 1,300 times fainter than Makemake, about 13,000 miles from the dwarf planet and has a diameter of about 100 miles across.

Incidentally, Makemake was found in 2005 and named after a god of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island. It is about 870 miles across.

The Kuiper Belt is a collection of frozen material leftover from the development of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago and home to many dwarf planets. A few of these worlds have identified satellites, but this is the first finding of a companion object to Makemake, one of five dwarf planets acknowledged by the International Astronomical Union.

How did scientists find this moon?

Observations of MK2 were made in April 2015 thanks to Hubble’s unique capacity to see faint objects in close proximity to bright ones. The telescope’s sharp resolution helped astronomers to distinguish the moon’s shine from Makemake’s glare.

“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 Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, said in a news release.

By calculating the moon’s orbit, astronomers can determine a mass for the dwarf planet system and increase understanding of its development. Discovering the moon also supports the idea that most dwarf planets have satellites, the NASA team said.

“Makemake is in the class of rare Pluto-like objects, so finding a companion is important,” Parker said. “The discovery of this moon has given us an opportunity to study Makemake in far greater detail than we ever would have been able to without the companion.”

Past infrared analyses of the dwarf planet showed Makemake’s exterior is very bright and cold, with some areas looking a bit warmer than other areas. Astronomers had indicated this disparity may be because of the sun warming dark patches on Makemake’s exterior. However, unless Makemake is in a unique orientation, these dark patches should result in the dwarf planet’s brightness varying significantly as it revolves. Yet, this quantity of variability has never been seen.

These past infrared data did not have enough resolution to distinguish Makemake from MK 2. The team’s reanalysis, by using the new Hubble observations, indicates that much of the warmer exterior found earlier in infrared light may, in fact, just have been the dark exterior of the companion MK 2.

The scientists said MK2’s darkness could be due to the moon’s gravity being unable to hold onto a bright, icy crust. This would make it comparable to comets and other Kuiper Belt Items, many of which are enclosed in very dark material.

—–

Image credit: NASA

The post Meet MK 2: The newly discovered moon of dwarf planet Makemake appeared first on Redorbit.

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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113413829/moon-found-makemake-solar-system-042716/


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