ST. GEORGE — A dwarf planet slightly smaller than Pluto will reach its peak brightness and be among the stars in the Southern Utah sky on Sunday as it continues its centurieslong journey around the sun.
Makemake, an icy, rocky astral body named after the Rapanui god of fertility, will be particularly bright on Sunday night as it continues its annual trek around the Kuiper Belt, a donut-shaped region of space beyond Neptune, according to NASA.
Makemake will be well-illuminated and situated in a premier location for viewing. In Southern Utah, stargazers can view Makemake with a telescope or a pair of high-powered binoculars in the constellation Coma Berenices in the western sky. At its highest point (roughly 71°), which will occur shortly before midnight (MDT), the dwarf planet will be at its brightest.
When viewed from Earth, Makemake is the second-brightest object in the Kuiper Belt – just behind Pluto. And compared to Pluto, Makemake has a slightly longer journey of 305 Earth years to complete its orbit around the sun, compared to Pluto’s 248 years.
The rose-colored dwarf planet is roughly one-ninth the size of Earth and more than 4.2 billion miles from the sun. It takes approximately six hours and 20 minutes for light to travel to Makemake’s surface. As a comparison, it takes light just over eight minutes to reach Earth’s surface.
Makemake has one moon, nicknamed MK2, that is 13,000 miles from the dwarf planet’s surface and 50 miles in diameter, about 42 times smaller than Earth’s moon, which is more than 2,100 miles in diameter. A day on Makemake is just over 22 hours long, similar to Earth.
While scientists know very little about the structural makeup of the dwarf planet, NASA said it does appear to have a reddish-brownish surface, similar to Pluto, and frozen methane has been detected on its surface.
NASA scientists have detected pellets of frozen methane on its surface that may be as large as a half-inch in diameter – compared to raindrops on Earth that are roughly half that size.
Similar to Pluto, this dwarf has the potential to develop a very thin atmosphere, largely made up of nitrogen, during perihelion, which is when its rotation brings it closest to the sun, and then the material refreezes as it moves further away.
The mini planet is situated in the Kuiper Belt, which is estimated to host hundreds of thousands of icy bodies formed during the early history of the solar system – approximately 4.5 billion years ago, according to NASA.
The icy bodies that make up this celestial hula hoop are known as plutoids, transneptunians or just Kuiper Belt objects and includes Pluto, the former ninth planet before it was demoted more than a decade ago.
Pluto’s complicated history
Pluto, discovered in 1930 by Clyde William Tombaugh, was long considered the solar system’s ninth planet until 2006, when its status was downgraded to a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union, a demotion that caused an uproar across the globe.
In order to be considered a planet, a rocky body must meet certain criteria: it must orbit around the sun; it must be large enough or have enough mass to have a round or spherical shape; it must have “cleared the neighborhood” around its orbit, which is to become so dominant, or exert enough gravitational pull, that no other bodies of similar size, other than its own moons, can remain in its general vicinity, according to the Library of Congress.
In Pluto’s case, it only met two of the criteria, and lost on the third, as it has yet to clear its own neighborhood.
While Pluto may have lost its planetary status, there was one state – Illinois – where a group of defiant state governors declared that Pluto “was unfairly downgraded,” and returned the planetary underdog to its rightful place as one of the big boys of the solar system.
The declaration was made official with a resolution passed in the Illinois State Senate in February 2009, which designated March 13 as “Pluto Day” in honor of Tombaugh, who aside from discovering Pluto was also born in Illinois.
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