Today I will take you a journey to an object, which resides in the Kuiper Belt and it has a name called Haumea. It is the first Kuiper belt object in our solar system to have a ring system. Another interesting thing about this object is it is the fastest spinning dwarf planet, which has resulted in its football like shape.
It takes 4 hours to complete one rotation which means, a day on this dwarf planet is 4 hours long. Haumea is 43 Astronomical Unit (AU) from the Sun. One AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun. At this distance, it takes sunlight 6 hours to get there. Also due to its greater distance from the Sun, this object takes 285 Earth years to make one trip around the Sun. Actual discoverer is not named by the IAU but two teams claims credit for the discovery of Haumea. In 2005, two Moons in orbit around Haumea were discovered. Namaka is the smaller, inner moon while Hi’iaka is the larger, outer moon. The near-infrared spectrum of both the moons shows that they are made up of water ice. Haumea was listed as the dwarf planet in the year 2008, until then it was just one of many Kuiper belt objects. Haumea has a radius of about 620 kilometers. In 2017, scientists announced a ring system around Haumea, making it the first Kuiper belt object to have a ring system.