It’s getting crowded out there. Since the de-planet-ing of Pluto, astronomy has been piling on the new stars with planets, and now we’ve got a new non-planet in the Solar System, too. The guy that discovered it is pretty pleased, too.
Makemake isn’t yet a tourist resort. It’s a Plutoid, like Pluto, and not particularly warm, at 30 degrees Kelvin, which would freeze the tail of the Easter Bunny, after whom it was named as a working title “Easterbunny”. It’s apparently covered in pure methane ice according to spectra analysis.
Makemake was the eventual choice, in the face of the International Astronomical Union’s mutterings about naming it themselves.
Ever considered naming a planet? Not as easy as it sounds, particularly if you’ve managed to include a rabbit in your thinking.
Mike Brown’s Planets:
Finally I considered Rabbit gods, of which there are many. Native American lore is full of hares, but they usually have names such as “Hare” or, better, “Big Rabbit”. I spent a while considering “Manabozho” an Algonquin rabbit trickster god, but I must admit, perhaps superficially, that the “Bozo” part at the end didn’t appeal to me. There are many other rabbit gods, but the names just didn’t speak to me. Strike three.
This is the IAU citation:
Makemake is the creator of humanity and the god of fertility in the mythology of the South Pacific island of Rapa Nui. He was the chief god of the Tangata manu bird-man cult and was worshipped in the form of sea birds, which were his incarnation. His material symbol, a man with a bird's head, can be found carved in petroglyphs on the island.
Makemake is now the third Plutoid to be named, after Pluto itself and Eris. It’s reddish, and it was only discovered in 2005, which either means someone’s been hogging the telescopes, or the history of astronomy may have a few holes in it, if these objects are visible from Earth.
By an interesting bit of timing:
Oh, and Rapa Nui? It was first visited by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722, precisely 283 years before the discovery of the Kuiper belt object now known as Makemake. Because of this first visit, the island is known in Spanish (it is a territory of Chile) as Isla de Pascua, but, around here, it is better known by its English name of Easter Island.
The Easter Bunny Syndrome strikes again.
That’s one heck of a long way for a rabbit to go with Easter eggs.
But if the little furry guy really is that keen on getting in on the naming act, why does he want the publicity, out there?
