Newly Found Plutoid Named 'Makemake'

2005 FY9, a dwarf planet roughly half the size of Pluto and falling into the newly created class of objects currently known as 'plutoids', was recently named by the International Astronomical Union 'Makemake', according to the suggestion made by its discoverer Mike Brown of Caltech. 'Makemake' is currently one of the largest named objects in the Kuiper Belt and the third object to enter the controversial class of 'plutoids', along with Pluto and its companion, Eris.

In the Rapa Nui mythology, Makemake is the name of the god who allegedly created the humanity. "This one was hard. Often there's a name that sort of speaks to you, that directly relates to the object," said Brown, pointing out that finding a proper name for the spherical object was anything but easy. Nevertheless, the IAU adopted it six months after the name was proposed without too much discussion, said Brian Marsden, secretary of the IAU Committee on Small Body Nomenclature, who is responsible for naming dwarf planets.

The controversy regarding the 'plutoid' objects is quickly fading away and the new class may soon get overall recognition. The IAU has named without a hitch yet another object beyond the orbit of Neptune, albeit darker days are still to come for the international organization. If you think naming Makemake was tough, wait 'till we get to talk about the procedure regarding the next objects in the list, since the IAU decided to try to name future dwarf planets according to the suggestion made by the discoverer.

However, there still is a bit of a dispute regarding the discoverer of 2003 EL61, another Kuiper Belt object waiting to be named, as two teams claim to have found it - one of Brown's and the other one pertaining to the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and led by Jose-Luis Ortiz.

The discovery of 2003 EL61 was announced by Ortiz on July 28, 2005, several days after one of his graduate students showed him images of an object that seemed similar to another one described by Brown in an online post. Apparently, Ortiz went looking on the Internet for Brown's telescope logs before he announced the discovery, thus claiming the credits for the work his team did not do.

"Who knows what the committees will accept. That's perhaps why we solved the problem of Makemake first. That was easy," said Marsden, relating to the fact that both teams have already proposed names for the object.