NASA Image of the Day 31 December 2022: Moon over Makemake!

NASA Image of the Day today is a mesmerizing snapshot of the second brightest dwarf planet of the Kuiper belt, Makemake with its moon.

By: HT TECH
| Updated on: Dec 31 2022, 22:43 IST

How well do you know Earth's Moon? How did it form, rotation, its orbit? Get up close and familiar- 5 points

Makemake — 1/5 How did the Moon form? According to the information provided by NASA, the leading theory behind the formation of the Moon is that a Mars-sized object collided with Earth billions of years ago, and debris from this collision eventually formed the Moon. (NASA)

image caption — 3/5 Moon orbit Earth: According to NASA, the Moon takes about one month to orbit Earth (27.3 days to complete a revolution, but 29.5 days to change from New Moon to New Moon). As the Moon completes each 27.3-day orbit around Earth, both Earth and the Moon are moving around the Sun. Because of this change in position, sunlight appears to hit the Moon at a slightly different angle on day 27 than it does on day zero ― even though the Moon itself has already traveled all the way around Earth. It takes a little more than two additional days for sunlight to hit the Moon in the same way it did on day zero. This is why it takes 29.5 days to get from new moon to new moon, even though it doesn’t take quite that long for the Moon itself to travel once around Earth. (NASA)

You would be surprised to know that Makemake holds an important place in the history of solar system studies. Reason? Makemake, along with Eris, was one of the objects whose discovery prompted the International Astronomical Union to reconsider the definition of a planet and prompted the creation of a new group of dwarf planets. The Kuiper Belt, a donut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune, is the residence of this dwarf planet Makemake. Makemake is the second-brightest object in the Kuiper Belt as seen from Earth, while Pluto is the brightest.

NASA's Image of the Day is none other than the mesmerizing image of the Makemake along with its moon. NASA explains, “Makemake, the second brightest dwarf planet of the Kuiper belt, has a moon. Nicknamed MK2, Makemake's moon reflects sunlight with a charcoal-dark surface, about 1300 times fainter than its parent body.” NASA further revealed that Makemake's moon was spotted by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2016.

“About 160 kilometres (100 miles) across compared to Makemake's 1400-kilometre diameter, MK2's relative size and contrast are shown in this artist's vision. An imagined scene of an unexplored frontier of the Solar System, it looks back from a spacecraft's vantage as the dim Sun shines along the Milky Way,” NASA said. The reason for its faint appearance is that the Sun is over 50 times farther from Makemake than it is from planet Earth.

Makemake is special!

Makemake takes about 305 Earth years to make one trip around the Sun. As Makemake orbits the Sun, it completes one rotation every 22 and a half hours, making its day length similar to Earth and Mars. The observation of Makemake and its moon MK 2, just as for Pluto and its satellites, will measure the system's mass and density and allow a broader understanding of the distant worlds.

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