A Ring Around the Dwarf Planet Haumea

European astronomers have announced the first discovery of a ring around a dwarf planet. Dwarf planets are similar to Pluto, in that they are small and hang out in a zone with others of their kind. This one, Haumea, is beyond Neptune, taking 284 Earth years to go around the Sun.

The ring is very faint, but astronomers at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia were able to find it when they saw Haumea cross in front of a star. The star’s light went out not only when Haumea crossed in front of it, but briefly before and after, indicating a ring was present.

All four of the giant planets in our solar system have rings, but this is the first found around a smaller planet. Its cousin Pluto definitely doesn’t have one, because we looked when the New Horizons probe went by it.

Haumea is named after the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth and has another oddity. It spins so rapidly – taking less than 4 hours for one spin -- that it doesn’t look exactly round, but more oval shaped. It’s the least round of any world we know bigger than about 60 miles across. It has two known moons, and now a ring too. The zone past Neptune, called the Kuiper Belt, is just getting more and more interesting.

(Our illustration is NOT a photo, just an artist's impression, based on what we have observed so far.)

Getting Close-up with Pluto's Moon Charon

One of the most intriguing things about Pluto is that it is more of a double planet than a planet with moons. One of Pluto's moons, Charon (pronounced like Sharon or Karen; both are used) is half the size of Pluto. No other moon we know is this big compared to the planet it orbits -- just another way that the Pluto system operates outside the usual rulebooks.

The diameter of Charon has been measured to be 751 miles, about the size of Texas. Charon has settled into the most comfortable orbit around Pluto that nature permits. It rotates and revolves in 6.4 Earth days, which is also the rate at which Pluto turns. This means that the day on Pluto is the same length as the Charon month, which hurts your head if you try to think too much about it.

Now the New Horizons craft is starting to send back images of Charon as well, and again, we are surprised. Our photo shows a black and white global picture of Charon that has been tinted with actual color information from one of the other instruments. The New Horizons team is informally referring to the striking dark spot near the top of the image as "Mordor," much to the delight of fans of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

But the inset in our picture is the most interesting. It shows an area of about 240 miles across (from top to bottom) and you can see some of the trenches and canyons that we are finding on Charon. Craters are also visible. Near the top left, we see a giant ice mountain sticking out of a trench. The NASA news release says: “This is a feature that has geologists stunned and stumped.” How did the mountain get or grow in there? It's those kind of odd mysteries that scientists live for.

(By the way, if you were asking yourself why the big moon has two different ways of pronouncing its name, it's a romantic story. The proper pronunciation from Greek mythology is like "Karen". But James Christy, the astronomer who discovered the big moon in 1978, secretly wanted the name to also remind people of his wife Charlene. So he likes making the name sound more like "Sharon." Astronomers (like most people) love romantic stories, so many use the pronunciation that Christy likes.

And Pluto itself has a name with a secret -- the astronomers at the Lowell observatory wanted to name it after their patron and founder, Percival Lowell, but we don't name planets after real people. So when a schoolgirl in England suggested the name Pluto to them, they jumped at it, since the first two letters are Lowell's initials.)

First Movies of Pluto (Not Much Detail, But Still Amazing to Have)

Scientists working with the New Horizons spacecraft, which is scheduled to reach Pluto in July, released the first ever long-distance movies of Pluto and its giant moon Charon today.

Check them out at: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20150429 

The spacecraft was between 69 and 64 million miles away from Pluto when the images were taken, still roughly 3/4 of the distance between the Earth and the Sun. So these movies are very crude compared to what we will have soon.

Still, to have any real detail at all in our views of Pluto and Charon is wonderful and just whets our appetites for what's coming, as we get closer and closer to the famous dwarf planet that got so much public pity in the last few years. Discovered in 1930, it is (as the news release with the film says,) a cool mystery at the outskirts of the known solar system. But soon, thanks to NASA's long flight out there, we will know so much more about it. Stay tuned.

(If you click on the link, you will find two different perspective movies and some background information.)