Haumea, or rather 136108 Haumea, whose discovery was officially announced in 2005, has been classified by the International Astronomical Union as a dwarf planet in 2008, and named after a Hawaiian goddess of fertility. The other recognized dwarf planets are Pluto, Ceres, MakeMake and Eris.
It is part of the “trans-neptunian” objects, namely beyond the orbit of Neptune, and is placed in the Kuiper belt. It has a size comparable to Pluto, an “elongated” form like a rugby ball, and is quite bright, the third brightest star in the Kuiper belt, after Pluto and Makemake, and rotates at high speed.
It is the only planet, together with Pluto, which in this remote area zona, has more than two moons which were named Namaka and Hiʻiaka. Eris and Makemake have only one small natural satellite.
Several observations of the dwarf planet were made with the Hubble Space Telescope, but thanks to the studies, made also with the help of the 182cm Copernicus Telescope dof the INAF observing station of Cima Ekar (Asiago), they discovered that it has a dense and thin 70km-wide ring like Saturn, composed of debris and ice, orbiting at about 2300 km from its surface.
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