Dwarf planet
Haumea
A football-shaped dwarf planet spinning in under four hours.
Haumea orbits the Sun every 285 years in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune. It spins once every 3.9 hours, one of the fastest rotations of any large body, and that spin stretches it into an elongated football shape. It has two moons and a ring.
How it moves
- Haumea orbits the Sun about once every 285 years at roughly 43 AU.
- Its orbit is inclined about 28 degrees with an eccentricity of 0.194.
- It rotates once every 3.91 hours, one of the fastest spins of any large object in the solar system.
- That rapid spin distorts Haumea into an elongated shape.
- Two moons, Hi'iaka and Namaka, orbit it, and it was the first Kuiper Belt object found to have rings.
Facts
- Mean radius
- 715 km
- Mass
- 4.006e+21 kg
- Surface gravity
- 0.35 m/s²
- Rotation period
- 3.914 hours
- Orbital period
- 104,027 days
- Average distance from the Sun
- 43.06 AU
- Eccentricity
- 0.1944
- Known moons
- 2
- Discovered
- Observed March 7, 2003, at Sierra Nevada Observatory, Spain (the IAU lists no official discoverer)
Haumea spins so fast, about every four hours, that it is stretched into a football shape.
Sources: ssd.jpl.nasa.gov, ssd-api.jpl.nasa.gov, science.nasa.gov