NASA Award Paper


Makemake is about a fifth as bright as Pluto. However, despite its comparative brightness, it was not discovered until well after a number of much fainter KBOs had been detected. Most of the scientific hunts for minor planets are conducted relatively close to the region of the sky that the Sun, Earth's Moon, and planets appear to lie in (the ecliptic). This is because there is a much greater likelihood of discovering objects there. Makemake is thought to have evaded detection during earlier searches because of its relatively high orbital inclination, as well as the fact that it was at its greatest distance from the ecliptic at the time of its discovery--in the northern constellation of Coma Berenices. "We don't know how long the Dagwood-sandwich structure would exist. This structure represents a stable state, but various factors could mean the moon doesn't reach this stable state," Dr. Christophe Sotin said in a May 1, 2014 statement. Dr. Sotin is of the JPL. Dr. Soderblom calculated the gravity signatures both in and around 1,200 craters that had been excavated by impacting objects on the lunar far side. He then went on to compare the gravity within each crater with the gravity of the surrounding terrain. Dr. Soderblom did this in order to determine whether an impact increased or decreased the local porosity.