Haumea is a dwarf planet located beyond Neptune's orbit. It was discovered in 2004 by a team headed by Mike Brown of Caltech at the Palomar Observatory in the United States and disputably also in 2005 by a team headed by José Luis Ortiz Moreno at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain, though the latter claim has been contested. On September 17, 2008, it was named after Haumea, the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth, under the expectation by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that it would prove to be a dwarf planet. Nominal estimates make it the third-largest known trans-Neptunian object, after Eris and Pluto, though the uncertainty in best-fit modeling slightly overlaps with the larger size estimates for Makemake.

Haumea's mass is about one-third that of Pluto, and 1/1400 that of Earth. Although its shape has not been directly observed, calculations from its light curve are consistent with it being a Jacobi ellipsoid (the shape it would be if it were a dwarf planet), with its major axis twice as long as its minor. In October 2017, astronomers announced the discovery of a ring system around Haumea, representing the first ring system discovered for a trans-Neptunian object. Haumea's gravity was until recently thought to be sufficient for it to have relaxed into hydrostatic equilibrium, though that is now unclear. Haumea's elongated shape together with its rapid rotation, rings, and high albedo (from a surface of crystalline water ice), are thought to be the consequences of a giant collision, which left Haumea the largest member of a collisional family that includes several large trans-Neptunian objects and Haumea's two known moons, Hiʻiaka and Namaka.

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  • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The liberal mind is a marvel, reading the papers today and obviously theres 0 scepticism about Xinjiang, but now they have transitioned from "How do we get China to stop doing this" to "When will China admit to doing it and make a 'oh no that was really sad what we did to our minority population oh well its all in the past now' movie like the rest of us?".

    Like literally talking about movies Swedes made about the ethnic cleansing of Sami people as an example, only problem being that we never stopped oppressing the Sami and trying to steal their lands to give to private mining companies. So literally now people just want China to admit to everything its been accused of and make flagellating films about it to exonerate themselves of the guilt, just like literally every western country has done.

    Oh yeah also as a side note, glowing review of some Steven Pinker book too with 0 mention about his connection to Epstein 👁️

    • Huldra [they/them, it/its]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      This is 100% partially why people still jerk themselves raw about Tiananment Square too, that there fucking CCP just wont admit to what they did! They have no performative shame or guilt like they're supposed to! They havent performed the ritual to allow it all to sit in the past and be ignored!