Dwarf Planets Makemake and Haumea

[lukebl]

I've been having a play with my new ZWO ASI533MC camera, and I paid my annual visit to Kuiper Belt objects Makemake and Haumea, capturing them on the nights of 8th and 9th May.

I always like to look for Pluto too, but thats very low down in Capricorn and will only visible in a narrow window for me in July/August.

250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, ZWO ASI533MC camera, 14 frames @ 30 second exposures. Field of view about 30 x 30 arc minutes.

This is 136472 Makemake, which is currently in Coma Berenices at magnitude 17.1. It's the second brightest Kuiper Belt object after Pluto, and with a diameter about 2/3 of Pluto but was only discovered in 2005.

This is a closeup animation of its movement over the 24 hour period. The wee galaxy above it is PGC1662663, apparently 2 billion light years away and receding from us at about 10.7% of light speed!

And this is 136108 Haumea, currently in Bootes, discovered in 2004/05, with some dispute about who saw it first (google it!).
Apparently it has a very fast rotation of 3.9 hours.

This is a closeup animation of its movement over the 24 hour period.

 

[maw lod qan]

Excellent!

The 24 hour change is amazing.

[callisto]

Thanks for sharing... excellent 👍 

 

Mark.

[NenoVento]

Truly amazing

[Dragon_Sky]

That’s a great capture! Well done

I have the exact same scope and camera, so I had a go at finding Makemake. Not sure if I got it or not, Astrometry wouldn’t annotate anything I uploaded?

I might have to use your pic as reference instead lol