Haumea (dwarf planet)
Haumea (planeta enano)
- Date
- 2003-2005 (disputado) · confidence low
- Place
- Sierra Nevada Observatory, Granada, Spain
- Credited to
- José Luis Ortiz Moreno (Sierra Nevada Observatory), official IAU credit; independently identified by Michael Brown, David Rabinowitz and Chad Trujillo (Caltech/Palomar)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Haumea is a trans-Neptunian dwarf planet with a highly elongated ellipsoidal shape due to its fast rotation (3.9 hours), with two moons and a ring. Its discovery was disputed between a Spanish team and a Caltech team; the IAU credited the find to the Sierra Nevada Observatory without naming an official discoverer.
Ortiz announced the find in July 2005 from precovery images taken in March 2003; Brown's Caltech team had already identified it in December 2004 (images from May 2004) and suspected improper access to his observation logs. The IAU did not assign credit for the discovery but did credit the location (Sierra Nevada) and accepted the name proposed by the Caltech team.
What it led to
- Recognition of a fourth trans-Neptunian dwarf planet
- Debate over ethics and priority in the era of digital astronomical archives
- Study of catastrophic collisions in the Kuiper belt (Haumea collisional family)