Santa (2003 EL 61 and friends) gets an official name

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MeteorWayne

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<h2 class="date-header"><font size="1">From Mike Brown's Planets Blog (with appreciation to the ephemeral mikeemert who turned me on to it)</font>&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2><p class="date-header">http://www.mikebrownsplanets.com/2008_09_01_archive.html</p><h2 class="date-header">Wednesday, September 17, 2008</h2><div class="post hentry uncustomized-post-template"><h3 class="post-title entry-title">Haumea </h3><div class="post-body entry-content">On December 28<sup>th</sup>, 2004, I discovered a Kuiper belt object brighter than anything anyone had ever seen before. Being only a few days after Christmas, I naturally nicknamed it Santa. <p>&nbsp;</p><p class="MsoNormal">...</p><p class="MsoNormal">But, still: Santa! How would I have known back in 2004 that Santa would be the single most interesting object ever discovered in the Kuiper belt? It has a moon &ndash; wait, no, two moons! It is oblong, sort of like a football (American style) that has been deflated and stepped on. And it rotates end over end every 4 hours, significantly faster than anything else large known anywhere in the solar system.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Large? Well, at least sort of large. The long axis is about the same size as Pluto or Eris or Makemake. Back when I thought that maybe the IAU was going to vote that anything the size of Pluto or larger was a planet I was going to argue that Santa was indeed a planet &ndash; as long as you looked at it at exactly the right angle (luckily, the IAU was much more sensible, so I did not have to make such a crazy argument).</p><p class="MsoNormal">Stranger still, Santa has the density of a rock. We think that most things out in the Kuiper belt are about equal portions of rock and of ice, but, apparently, this does not apply to not Santa. It&rsquo;s only rock. Except that even that is not true. When we finally got a chance to look closely at its surface with the Keck telescope we realized that the surface is nothing but ice. Santa must have a structure like an M&M, except that instead of a thin layer of sugar surrounding chocolate, the thin outer shell is ice and the interior is rock. Don&rsquo;t bite.</p><p class="MsoNormal">These characteristics already make Santa the strangest object in the Kuiper belt. Several years ago we came up with what thought was a good explanation. What if, eons ago, Santa was an even larger Kuiper belt object and it got smacked &ndash; in a glancing blow &ndash; by another Kuiper belt object? That would explain the fast spin. And the fast spin would be enough to explain the oblong shape; anything spinning that fast would be pulled into such a big stretch.</p><p class="MsoNormal">What&rsquo;s more, the initially large Santa could have had a rocky interior and icy exterior, much like the Earth has an iron interior and a rocky interior. When the huge impact occurred, it could have cracked that outer icy mantle and ejected all of that ice into space. The two moons that circle Santa are pieces of that icy mantle.</p><p class="MsoNormal">This explanation was, we thought, pretty good. And then it got <em>really </em>good.</p><p class="MsoNormal">While looking across the Kuiper belt at many different objects, we realized that a small number of objects in the Kuiper belt look like tiny little chunks of ice. How strange. Even stranger, though, was that all of these chunks of ice were, relatively speaking, next-door neighbors of Santa. We had found the other chunks that had been removed from the mantle of Santa. The story was complete.</p><p class="MsoNormal">&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">After we discovered Santa, we worked hard to get the first scientific paper ready to announce the discovery. In science there is always a tension between doing the careful work to make a complete announcement and doing an instant but incomplete announcement in order to make sure you don&rsquo;t get scooped. We were as worried as anyone about being scooped, but we resisted the temptation for instant announcement. We felt that the science was too important.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">On July 7<sup>th</sup> 2005, as I was putting the finishing touches on the scientific paper, in hopes of submitting it the next day, I had a minor delay. My daughter was born. I had somehow convinced myself that there was no way that she would be born for another week. I was certain that I had more time. But I had no more time, no more time at all. I forgot about Santa and the rest of the Kuiper belt and turned my obsession from it to her. The announcement about Santa would have to wait, I was too busy sending out announcements about Lilah, instead. What difference would a few months make, really?</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">The announcement did indeed wait, but only for 21 more days. On a late Thursday night, between changing diapers and filling bottles and descending ever more into sleep deprivation, I checked my email and saw the announcement of the discover of Santa myself. A previously unheard-of Spanish team had just discovered Santa a few days earlier. And they called it the tenth planet.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">No no no no no no no no! I was horrified. My discovery had just been scooped by a group who decided not to wait to learn more. They didn&rsquo;t know any of the information about Santa that we did, in particular that it has a satellite and from the orbit of the satellite you could tell that it was only 1/3 the size of Pluto, and that it was <em>definitely not the tenth planet</em>. Worse, a few months earlier, we had actually discovered something that <em>was </em>bigger than Pluto. This was going to cause nothing but confusion.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">That night, on no sleep but much caffeine, I stayed up to finish the paper about Santa that I had put aside three weeks earlier. We would not get credit for discovery, which was painful enough, but at least we would quickly set the record straight about its size and importance. After I sent the paper off, I sent a quick email to congratulate the Spanish team on their discovery and I filled them in on everything that we knew so that they could answer questions from the press correctly. Finally I nodded off to sleep.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">I woke to a nightmare. In the intervening hours it appeared that someone had used the knowledge that we had been tracking Santa to start looking into what else we had been doing. Someone had traced where we had been pointing our telescopes for the past months. We had been pointing them at the object that would one day be called Eris &ndash; the object bigger than Pluto, the real tenth planet! That morning, the astronomical coordinates of Eris were posted to a public web page with discussions about what might be there that we had been watching. It was clear to me that<span> </span>as soon as the sun went down that night, anyone with a moderately large amateur telescope could point up in the sky at those coordinates and, the next day, claim they had<span> </span>discovered the 10<sup>th</sup> planet.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">...</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">After more than three years, Santa received a formal name today. Santa is now, and forever, officially Haumea. From the official citation issued by the International Astronomical Union:</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal"><em>Haumea is the goddess of childbirth and fertility in Hawaiian mythology. Her many children sprang from different parts of her body. She takes many different forms and has experienced many different rebirths. As the goddess of the earth, she represents the element of stone.</em></p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">The name was chosen by David Rabinowitz of Yale University, one of the co-discoverers of Santa (along with me and Chad Trujillo of Gemini Observatory in Hawaii). He chose the name because Haumea is closely associated with stone, and Santa (as we knew it at the time) appeared to be made of nothing but rock.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">But the name is even better than that. Just like the Kuiper belt object Haumea is the central object in a cloud of Kuiper belt objects that are the pieces of it, the goddess Haumea is the mother of many other deities in Hawaiian mythology who are pieces pulled off of her body.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">Two of these pieces are Hi&rsquo;iaka, the patron goddess of the big island of Hawaii, who was born from the mouth of Haumea, and Namaka, a water spirit, who was born from the body of Haumea. These names were chosen for the brighter outer moon and the fainter inner moon, respectively.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">Officially:</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal"><em>Haumea I, Hi'iaka, discovered 2005 Jan 26 by M.E. Brown, A.H. Bouchez, and the Keck Observatory Adaptive Optics team <br /><br />Hi'iaka was born from the mouth of Haumea and carried by her sister Pele in egg form from their distant home to Hawaii. She danced the first Hula on the shores of Puna and is the patron goddess of the island of Hawaii and of hula dancers. <br /><br />Haumea II, Namaka, discovered 2005 Nov 7 by M.E. Brown, A.H. Bouchez, and the Keck Observatory Adaptive Optics teams <br /><br />Namaka is a water spirit in Hawaiian mythology. She was born from the body of Haumea and is the sister of Pele. When Pele sends her burning lava into the sea, Namaka cools the lava to become new land.</em></p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">Several weeks after the Spanish team announced the discovery of Santa which precipitated the announcement of the object that would eventually be named Eris, which precipitated the entire discussion of dwarf planets, it became clear that the Spanish team had not been forthcoming. They themselves had been the first to access the web sites which told where our telescopes looked. And they did this access two days before they claimed discover (you can see a detailed timeline reconstructed from the web logs <font color="#de7008">here)</font></p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">Did they use this information to claim the discovery for themselves? </p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">As a scientist, my job is to examine the evidence and come up with the most plausible story. Here are some possibilities. It is impossible to disprove <em>this</em> story, claimed by the Spanish team: while looking through two-year-old data, they discovered Santa legitimately, and then, only hours later, accessed information about where our telescopes had been looking and were shocked (shocked!) to realize that the object they had just found was the same object that we had been tracking for months. Wanting to establish priority, they quickly announced, knowing essentially nothing about the object.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">Though this story cannot be disproved, it does not have much of an air of plausibility about it. Data that were two years old happened to get analyzed just hours before &ndash; whoops! &ndash; the team found out that someone else had found the same thing? Hmmmmm. Perhaps most damning, you would think that perhaps the Spanish team would be willing to admit this early on. Instead they appeared to attempt to hide the fact that they ever knew anything about our telescope pointings.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">Let&rsquo;s try a more plausible explanation: the Spanish team found our telescope pointings, used that information to infer the existence of Santa, and assumed that no one would ever know they had not found it legitimately. </p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">No way to prove it, but the later hypothesis certainly sounds more plausible. To be fair, though, I don&rsquo;t think there is any way to ever know the full extent of the truth, except on the off chance that someone on the Spanish team eventually spills the beans about what really happened. I keep waiting, but I don&rsquo;t hold my breath.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">But wait, there&rsquo;s more to ask! If the telescope pointings were &ndash; even if inadvertently &ndash; on a publicly accessible web site, was it wrong to look at them? The obvious answer is that there is nothing wrong with looking at information on any publicly accessible web site, just as there is nothing wrong with looking at books in a library. But the standards of scientific ethics are also clear: any information used from another source must be acknowledged and cited. One is not allowed to go to a library, find out about a discovery in a book, and then claim that discovery as your own with no mention of having read it in a book. One is not even allowed to first make a discovery and then go to the library and realize that someone else independently made the same discovery and then not acknowledge what you learned in the library. Such actions would be considered scientifically dishonesty. </p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">In the end, while we are likely to never know exactly what happened, it appears clear that the Spanish team was either dishonest or fraudulent. They have claimed the facts that merely make them dishonest. If I had to bet, though, I would bet for the later.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;&hellip;.</p><p style="line-height:normal" class="MsoNormal">Officially, the naming of Haumea does nothing to put to rest this three-year-old controversy. The committee that voted to accept the name has said that, while they will take the name proposed by our team rather than the name proposed by the Spanish team, they are not favoring one claim over the other.<span> </span>They will let posterity decide. </p></div></div> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080"><em><font color="#000000">But the Krell forgot one thing John. Monsters. Monsters from the Id.</font></em> </font></p><p><font color="#000080">I really, really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function</font><font color="#000080"> </font></p> </div>
 
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3488

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<p><font size="2"><strong>Thanks Wayne,</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>So, 2003 EL61 has a proper name at long last. About flaming time for an object of that size.</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Hi'iaka is also the name of a giant 11,000 metre tall mountain on the Jupiter moon Io, together with a lava lake (Hi'iaka Montes & Hi'iaka Patera), so thought the name of Haumea's outer moon looked familiar.<br /></strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>The names are very sensible & I'm sure that H2Ouniverse (Joel) will not be disappointed unlike Makemake.</strong></font></p><p><font size="2"><strong>Andrew Brown.</strong></font></p> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>
 
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h2ouniverse

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<p><BR/>Replying to:<BR/><DIV CLASS='Discussion_PostQuote'>Thanks Wayne,So, 2003 EL61 has a proper name at long last. About flaming time for an object of that size.Hi'iaka is also the name of a giant 11,000 metre tall mountain on the Jupiter moon Io, together with a lava lake (Hi'iaka Montes & Hi'iaka Patera), so thought the name of Haumea's outer moon looked familiar.The names are very sensible & I'm sure that H2Ouniverse (Joel) will not be disappointed unlike Makemake.Andrew Brown. <br />Posted by 3488</DIV><br /><br />Hi Andrew,</p><p>I received the news with relief, having feared for more awkward choices.</p><p>A regret though for Hi'iaka. The " ' " is not very practical, already generating bugs in some softwares. (I thought it was prohibited by the way by the MPC/IAU...). And this is for the largest moon. May be 350km wide, or even much larger if the albedo is lower than the one of Haumea. A spelling like Hiyaka or Hihiaka would have been more convenient&nbsp; and less awkward for Western languages without betraying the Hawaiian pronunciation. </p><p>I would have preferred a classical name but well, not that bad finally. "Ataecina" was not fantastic either (Ortiz'pick).</p><p>Hope we will have a mission to the Haumean system...</p><p>Best regards.</p>
 
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