Astronomers, using the Hubble Space Telescope, discovered a tiny dark moon orbiting around the dwarf planet Makemake, Pluto's sister in the Kuiper distant belt.
This is the first satellite discovered in Makemake, an 870-mile dwarf planet discovered in 2005.
Makemake, named after the deity Rapanuyutz (inhabitants of Easter Island), is the second brightest object in the Kuiper belt after Pluto.
The newly found moon of the dwarf planet was noticed in April, when a spot appeared on the image made with the Hubble camera, more than 1300 times dimmer than Makemake. This NASA said in a press release published on Tuesday.
The moon, nicknamed MK2, is estimated to be about 100 miles in diameter. It is located about 13,000 miles from Makemake. “This means that when you look at the system, you lose sight of the moon because it is lost in the bright light of Makemak,” said astronomer Alex Parker from the Southwestern Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Astronomers will try to learn more about the moon's orbit in order to calculate the mass for the system and learn more details about how it is formed.
“The discovery ... gave us the opportunity to explore Makemake in much more detail than we could without a satellite,” said Parker.
Preliminary calculations show that if the Moon is in a circular orbit, it completes the rotation around Makemake for 12 days or longer.
