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IAU Names Fifth Dwarf Planet Haumea

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-was-rooting-for-slash-and-dot dept.

Kligat writes "The International Astronomical Union has renamed the dwarf planet Haumea and its two moons Hi'iaka and Namaka, after the Hawaiian fertility goddess, the patron goddess of Hawaii, and a water spirit. The cigar-shaped body is speculated to have resulted from its short rotational period of only four hours. Holding up the reclassification of the body as a dwarf planet was a dispute over its discovery between the groups of José Luis Ortiz Moreno and Michael E. Brown."

1 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not Gravitationally Rounded by bunratty · · Score: 2, Informative

    Haumea is cigar-shaped because it is rounded by gravity and stretched by rotation. That is different from being a rigid, irregularly shaped object that resembles a cigar.

    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.