Image from the Keck telescope of Haumea and its moons Hi'iaka (top) and Namaka (bottom)
An insight into Haumea… literally! As you may recall, I introduced you to my egg shaped friend back in April. If you've forgotten, it's an egg shapes dwarf planet beyond the orbit of Neptune that has crystalline water ice on its surface. Astronomers expect the solar radiation from the sun to destroy the crystalline structure of any surface ice, so for Haumea and it's moon to show this structure, something funny must be going on. An answer to this question comes from Dr. C. Dumas and collaborators from the European Southern Observatory. They believe that a mixture of tidal heating and radiogenic heating provides enough energy to essentially counteract the solar radiation and keep the surface water in crystalline form. Tidal heating is when another body (Haumea's moons) tug on the parent body (Haumea). This constant squeezing motion produces energy and keeps the planet warm. Haumea's moons are not large enough to create a lot of tidal heating, so astronomers think that radioactivity in its core produces the rest of the energy! Haumea is basically a giant nuclear power plant with radioactive Uranium and Thorium in its core producing tons of energy! It will take some time and technology to determine if these theories are correct, but they seem like the only logical option. Unless, of course, there is something new and exciting happening in Haumea that astronomers haven't thought of yet!
