Planets: The Fascinating World Of Makemake
Uncover the interesting facts about Makemake. Dive deep into this freezing world.
Located in the Kuiper Belt, Makemake is an dwarf planet. It’s slightly smaller than Pluto and is the second brightest object in the Kuiper Belt, with Pluto being the brightest. Due to it helping make the definition of a dwarf planet and a usual planet, this dwarf planet has an important place in history. There’s quite a bit about this planet, here are the most interesting, intriguing and coolest facts.
Because Makemake has a rather thin atmosphere and is found so far away from the Sun, at most points, it’s chilly, freezing, frigid. Being in the Kuiper Belt, which is beyond Neptune, the power of the Sun barely reaches it. This dwarf planet’s average temperature is -230 Celsius (-382 Fahrenheit), making its potential for life extremely unlikely.
Makemake is around 1/9 the radius of Earth, with a radius of approximately 444 miles (715 kilometres). And its average distance from the Sun is a staggering 4,235,000,000 miles (6,847,000,000 kilometres). From this distance, it takes sunlight around 6 hours 20 minutes to travel between the Sun and Makemake.
Makemake takes a staggering 305 Earth years to orbit once around the Sun ( the definition of a year) which is 111, 399 Earth days. Since its year is longer than here on Earth, it doesn’t mean that its day is wildly different to than on Earth. At a similar length to an Earth day, on Makemake one rotation on its axis (the definition of a day) takes 22 and a half hours, which is one and a half hours shorter than our day.
As Makemake is so far away, we can’t make out all the details on its surface; we can still figure some of it out by comparing it to other planets that are similar to it. Like we can tell that it is the same sort of colour as Pluto. Scientists have detected frozen methane and ethane resting on its cold surface.
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