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Haumea (minor-planet designation: 136108 Haumea) is a dwarf planet located beyond Neptune's orbit. [25] It was discovered in 2004 by a team headed by Mike Brown of Caltech at the Palomar Observatory, and formally announced in 2005 by a team headed by José Luis Ortiz Moreno at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain, who had discovered it that year in precovery images taken by the team in 2003.
Since 2008, there have been five dwarf planets recognized by the IAU, although only Pluto has actually been confirmed to be in hydrostatic equilibrium [25] (Ceres is close to equilibrium, though some anomalies remain unexplained). [26] Ceres orbits in the asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. The others all orbit beyond Neptune.
These bodies are generally assumed to be dwarf planets, although they have not yet been demonstrated to be in hydrostatic equilibrium, and there is some disagreement for Haumea: [57] [58] Haumea ( 2003 EL 61 ) – discovered by Brown et al. December 28, 2004, and announced by Ortiz et al. on July 27, 2005.
The number of dwarf planets in the Solar System is unknown. Estimates have run as high as 200 in the Kuiper belt [1] and over 10,000 in the region beyond. [2] However, consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many large trans-Neptunian objects, as well as spectroscopic analysis of their surfaces, suggests that the number of dwarf planets may be much lower, perhaps only nine among ...
Artistic rendering of Haumea, a dwarf planet with triaxial ellipsoid shape. A Jacobi ellipsoid is a triaxial (i.e. scalene) ellipsoid under hydrostatic equilibrium which arises when a self-gravitating, fluid body of uniform density rotates with a constant angular velocity. It is named after the German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi. [1]
Often, the equilibrium shape is an oblate spheroid, as is the case with Earth. However, in the cases of moons in synchronous orbit, nearly unidirectional tidal forces create a scalene ellipsoid. Also, the purported dwarf planet Haumea is scalene because of its rapid rotation though it may not currently be in equilibrium.
The largest of these may have a hydrostatic-equilibrium shape, but most are irregular. Most of the trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) listed with a radius smaller than 200 km have " assumed sizes based on a generic albedo of 0.09" since they are too far away to directly measure their sizes with existing instruments.
Orbits of Haumea family members, sharing semimajor axes around 43 AU, and inclinations around 27°.. The dwarf planet Haumea is the largest member of the family, and the core of the differentiated progenitor; other identified members are the moons of Haumea and the Kuiper belt objects (55636) 2002 TX 300, (24835) 1995 SM 55, (19308) 1996 TO 66, (120178) 2003 OP 32, (145453) 2005 RR 43, (86047 ...