Caoimhín's Content

Today are taking a look at one of the dwarf planets, along with some of the candidate dwarf planets, with a digression to discuss the ISS as well.

The dwarf planet Makemake is pretty much of the last dwarf planet, in our current list of official dwarf planets at least. Really, Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Haumea and Makemake are just the first dwarf planets. There are various other objects like Quaoar, Sedna and Gonggong which are regularly considered to be dwarf planets, but official definitions do vary.

In most of my videos, I turn off the option to display satellites because they are artificial man made objects that really only get in the way when you’re looking at stars and planets. However, every now and then, a man made object worth looking at passes over head. Seeing a bright enough object drifting across the sky at the right speed is often enough to guess what it is. I have mentioned previously that the field of view at which I show the sky is not the field of view most people can see with their eyes. Narrowing the field of view helps to show that the object is clearly moving and being so big and so bright, there’s really only one thing it can be, the ISS. This is the International Space Station.

The best time to see the International Space Station is close to sunset. I generally look into the future, and the example I’m using is form the 16th of this month. The International Space Station is a man made object, so while it’s easy to predict where Venus and Saturn are going to be even years into the future, the International Space Station does have its motion altered, it can change exactly where it’s orbiting the Earth. How high it is also change, it drops a little over time and then gets pushed back to a height by docking transport vehicles. All of these other things can make the ISS a little more difficult to predict, but there’s a good likelihood that we will be able to see it at sunset over the next couple of evenings. Thanks to the way the ISS makes its passes, you very often get to see it twice in one night, though not always.

There is also a good chance that the ISS will pass overhead during the night without being visible. If the ISS’s large solar panels aren’t catching the sunlight, then it won’t be visible at all. When the ISS moves into the Earth’s shadow, it’s still there, we just can’t see it because it’s not reflecting that light. Moving later into the later at night, and it seems that it will be briefly visible when it’s quite high, next to Venus and Saturn. However, being so much later at night means that the International Space Station will get into the Earth’s shadow sort of much earlier in its passage across the sky. It will stay visible for longer earlier in the night.

It’s a nice treat, the International Space Station is always nice to see, it’s a very impressive object, and of course it’s a very impressive feat of human engineering. The ISS is a whole lab with spaces for six-odd people to sleep in, orbiting around the Earth. This is a structure that was constructed in space from parts that were lifted off from the Earth. The International Space Station was and is far too big to launch into space on its own, so it did have to be constructed in space. That is likely to be the case for future space stations as well, but of course we’ve only had a handful of space stations, so far. Hopefully more will be created in the future.

Looking at this evening sky, we still have our planets, Mars, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. Uranus is still over the horizon by the Pleiades and Neptune is just over Saturn. Mercury would be just under the horizon somewhere. Of course we’re looking at the dwarf planets, and to take a closer look at Makemake, we need to push a little bit later. We’ll need to wait for the Plough or the Big Dipper to move past the northern horizon, up into the east. Makemake is in the constellaiton of Coma Bernices, the Hair of Bernice. This is just under Canes Venatici with respect to the Plough’s tail or handle. Bernice’s Hair is one of the lesser known constellations, and it is roughly where Makemake is. Of course, the coma of a comet is kind of like a long ponytail stretched out behind it, this is how these instances of “coma” are connected.

Makemake is listed here as a dwarf planet, discovered in 2005, it is the second brightest Trans-Neptunian object. That means that it is second brightest to Pluto, Pluto is certainly brighter than Makemake. It doesn’t appear to have an image in Stellarium, which is a little disappointing given that it does have one for Haumea, but Haumea a little bit bigger and a little bit more prominent. I believe it was discovered a little bit earlier than Makemake as well. Makemake is believed to be a dwarf planet, it is accepted as a dwarf planet, but it’s not one of the first three. Ceres was considered an asteroid, Pluto was considered a planet, and then of course Eris kind of wrecked everything. You can check out my previous videos on Pluto and Eris if you’d like to learn more, and of course I recently put up a video about Haumea as well, which was sort of the next one discovered or the next one accepted to be a dwarf planet. Makemake is the next one after that.

Makemake is not how it would be pronounced if it was an English name. It’s not pronounced like “make make” which would kind of be a terrible name, but as four independent syllables, “ma ke ma ke”. This name comes from the language of Rapa Nui, the language of Easter Island. Rapa Nui is the native name for Easter Island, which is off the coast of South America. However, it is in the Pacific Ocean and it is part of the same cultural group as a lot of the other Pacific islands, including Hawai’i, where we get the name Haumea from. That Oceanic family of languages has given names to a couple of different things in the sky here, and of course more and more hopefully in the future. The Oceanic language family is itself only part of the larger Austronesian language family.

Makemake is certainly not visible to the naked eye, and with the light pollution of a city it would be pretty tough to see even with a telescope. However, I have been told that you can see this through a telescope at least under good conditions. Unfortunately, in Stellarium, the object isn’t shown under any conditions. These distant objects are incredibly difficult to observe and very often they’re not observed directly. Many small distant objects are noticed when they block out a star. It could take a long time for it to actually happen, though I know that it happened with Makemake a couple of years ago. Due to Makemake not showing up as a dot in Stellarium, it’s not going to obscure or occult any star it moves in front of. However, the occultation of a star by Makemake is one of the ways in which it was measured and shown to not have much of an atmosphere.

Makemake is among the last accepted dwarf planets, but who accepts what dwarf planets varies quite a lot. As such, I am going to quickly take a look here some of the other objects that are regularly considered dwarf planets. Sedna is not listed as a dwarf planet by Stellarium, it’s considered a sednoid. Of course, Pluto is both a dwarf planet and a plutino, because it’s in that orbital group that gets its name from, from Pluto. Orcus is considered a plutino because that’s the kind of orbit that it follows, a very similar orbit to Pluto. By some it is considered a dwarf planet, it’s certainly considered a candidate dwarf planet.

Another is Quaoar, which sounds terrible when pronounced as “kwawar”. It’s more like “kwa’uwar” or “kʷaʔuwar”. I don’t speak the endangered Tongva language of Central California and unfortunately not many people do. This is listed here as a cubewano another name I’ve found very difficult to pronounce, and there seems to be conflicting reports on how it should be pronounced. Quaoar, and many other names, are being loaned into English from other languages, and it can be tough to pronounce things from a different language. Quaoar is another object that may be a dwarf planet, discovered back in 2002.

What defines a dwarf planet isn’t just its size, it’s hydrostatic equilibrium, it’s whether or not it has become a solid ball, a solid object. Makemake, does have at least one moon, there’s thought to be a second. A moon orbiting around an object gives us a much better idea of its density. That is, a moon orbiting around an object gives us a much better idea of its mass, and then its mass and its volume can be used to give us the density. When an object has reached hydrostatic equilibrium, all of the air spaces and gaps have been squished out of its core, so it is more dense. With Makemake, it’s got a moon orbiting around it, so we can make some estimations as to its density, whereas there are other objects that may be a similar size to Makemake or even larger, but without a moon orbiting around them, we don’t know if they have fully consolidated on the inside or if they’re still differentiated into various different materials. That really is the question, until we know how these objects are composed, it gets very hard to say for certain that they are a dwarf planet.

Quaoar is listed as a dwarf planet according to the International Astronomical Union, and it’s not listed as a dwarf planet according to Stellarium, but different places have different definitions of a dwarf planet and different willingnesses to accept them. We can talk about something as a candidate dwarf planet, and if people talk about something as a candidate dwarf planet for long enough, they may end up shortening it to just dwarf planet, even if it that isn’t wholly, wholly accurate.

This of course was just a quick run through. I’m glad that the International Space Station came up, and I will be looping back around soon to talk about various other planets in the solar system. If you weren’t following me when I first spoke about Mercury and Venus, then of course I encourage you to go back and take a look at my earlier videos because I will be covering slightly different content, but I will be dealing with those inner planets and the other major planets of the solar system again in the future.

Do like this piece if you enjoyed it and subscribe to this website and my YouTube channel if you’d like to see those future videos. Thank you for reading and hopefully I’ll see you back here next time.