Makemake

Dwarf Planet· orbits the Sun

Makemake is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt and, after Pluto, the brightest known. No spacecraft has visited it; everything we know comes from telescopic spectroscopy and a 2011 stellar occultation, which found no global atmosphere. Its surface temperature is estimated near 30–35 K.

Open in 3D viewSee Makemake in the live, interactive 3D map

Key facts

Mass

3.10 × 10²¹ kg

0.0422 Moon masses

Radius

715 km

11% of Earth's radius

Surface gravity

0.405 m/s²

4% of Earth's

Day length

22.76 hours

Year

308 Earth years

112,423 Earth days

Distance from Sun

45.6 AU

Moons

S/2015 (136472) 1

Science

Physical

Mass: 3.10 × 10²¹ kg · 0.0422 Moon masses
Radius: 715 km · 11% of Earth's radius
Density: 2,025 kg/m³ · 2× water
Surface gravity: 0.405 m/s² · 4% of Earth's
Escape velocity: 761 m/s · 7% of Earth's

Orbital

Distance from the Sun: 52.7 AU
Semi-major axis: 45.6 AU
Eccentricity: 0.1585
Inclination: 39.97 °
Orbital period: 307.80 years
Perihelion: 38.4 AU
Aphelion: 52.8 AU
Mean orbital velocity: 4.41 km/s

Rotation

Rotation period: 22.76 hours

Composition

Bulk composition: Surface dominated by frozen methane (CH₄), with ethane and possibly nitrogen ices, inferred from near-infrared spectroscopy. The bulk rock/ice interior is unconstrained — no spacecraft has visited.
Surface imagery: No real surface imagery exists — this object has never been visited; color is approximate, inferred from spectroscopy.

Radiation & temperature

Insolation: 0.000481 S⊕ · 1/2,078 of the sunlight Earth receives
Geometric albedo: 0.81
Equilibrium temperature: 27 K (-246 °C)

Discovery & history

Discovered: March 31, 2005
By: Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz
Method: Photographic plates
Name: The creator god of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island.

Makemake was discovered on 31 March 2005 by Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz at Palomar — just after Easter, which earned it the team's codename 'Easterbunny' before it received the provisional designation 2005 FY9. The second-brightest known Kuiper-belt object after Pluto, it was one of the bodies whose discovery pushed the IAU to define 'dwarf planet' in 2006. It was named for Makemake, the creator god and fertility deity of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island, in keeping with its Easter-time discovery. A 2011 stellar occultation found no global atmosphere, and in 2016 the Hubble Space Telescope revealed a small, dark moon nicknamed MK 2.

Images

Artist's impression of the surface of Makemake — not a photograph — ESO / L. Calçada / Nick Risinger (CC BY 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons

Artist's concept of Makemake and its small moon MK 2 — not a photograph — NASA, ESA, A. Parker & M. Buie (SwRI) (CC BY 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons

Images from open archives · credit shown per image