Controversy over the discovery of Haumea

was the first of all the dwarf planet

Dwarf planet

A dwarf planet, as defined by the International Astronomical Union , is a celestial body orbiting the Sun that is massive enough to be spherical as a result of its own gravity but has not cleared its neighboring region of planetesimals and is not a satellite...

s to be discovered since Pluto

Pluto

Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

in 1930. However, its naming and formal acceptance as a dwarf planet were delayed by several years due to controversy over who should receive credit for discovering it. A California Institute of Technology

California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

(Caltech) team headed by Michael E. Brown

Michael E. Brown

Michael E. Brown has been a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology since 2003....

first noticed the object, but a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

team headed by José Luis Ortiz Moreno

José Luis Ortiz Moreno

José Luis Ortiz Moreno is an astronomer, and former Vicedirector of Technology at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía , Spain. He leads a team working on minor solar system objects at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Granada, Spain....

were the first to announce it, and so normally would receive credit.

However, Brown suspects the Spanish team of fraud, of using Caltech observations to make their discovery, while the Ortiz team accuses the American team of political interference with the International Astronomical Union

International Astronomical Union

The International Astronomical Union IAU is a collection of professional astronomers, at the Ph.D. level and beyond, active in professional research and education in astronomy...

(IAU). IAU officially recognized the Californian team's proposed name Haumea in September 2008, although the Spanish team had proposed the name Ataecina.

Discovery and announcement

On December 28, 2004, Mike Brown and his team discovered Haumea on images they had taken with the 1.3 m SMARTS Telescope at the Palomar Observatory

Palomar Observatory

Palomar Observatory is a privately owned observatory located in San Diego County, California, southeast of Pasadena's Mount Wilson Observatory, in the Palomar Mountain Range. At approximately elevation, it is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology...

in the United States on May 6, 2004, while looking for what he hoped would be the tenth planet. The Caltech discovery team used the nickname "Santa

Santa Claus

Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...

" among themselves, as they had discovered Haumea on December 28, 2004, just after Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

. However, it was clearly too small to be a planet as it was significantly smaller than Pluto

Pluto

Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

, and Brown did not announce the discovery. Instead he kept it under wraps, along with several other large trans-Neptunian object

Trans-Neptunian object

A trans-Neptunian object is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater distance on average than Neptune.The first trans-Neptunian object to be discovered was Pluto in 1930...

s (TNOs), until through additional observation he could better determine their natures. When his team discovered Haumea's moons

Moons of Haumea

The outer Solar System dwarf planet Haumea has two known moons, Hiiaka and Namaka, named after Hawaiian goddesses. These small moons were discovered in 2005, from observations of Haumea made at the large telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii....

, they realized that Haumea was more rocky than other TNOs, and that its moons were mostly ice. They then discovered a small family of nearby icy TNOs

Haumea family

The Haumea family is the only identified trans-Neptunian collisional family; that is, the only group of trans-Neptunian objects with similar orbital parameters and spectra that suggest they originated in the disruptive impact of a progenitor body...

, and concluded that these were remnants of Haumea's icy mantle

Mantle (geology)

The mantle is a part of a terrestrial planet or other rocky body large enough to have differentiation by density. The interior of the Earth, similar to the other terrestrial planets, is chemically divided into layers. The mantle is a highly viscous layer between the crust and the outer core....

, which had been blasted off by a collision. On July 7, 2005, while he was finishing the paper describing the discovery, Brown's daughter Lilah was born, which delayed the announcement further. On July 20, the Caltech team published an online abstract of a report intended to announce the discovery at a conference the following September. In this Haumea was given the code K40506A.

At around that time, Pablo Santos Sanz, a student of José Luis Ortiz Moreno

José Luis Ortiz Moreno

at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía

Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía

The Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía is an astrophysics-related research institute funded by the High Council of Scientific Research of the Spanish government Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas , and is located in Granada, Andalusia, Spain...

at Sierra Nevada Observatory

Sierra Nevada Observatory

The Observatorio de Sierra Nevada is located at Loma de Dilar in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, in the province of Granada, established in 1981...

in southern Spain, examined the backlog of photos that the Ortiz team had started taking in December 2002. He says that he found Haumea in late July on images taken on March 7, 9, and 10, 2003. In checking whether this was a known object, the team came across Brown's internet summary, describing a bright TNO much like the one they had just found. Googling

Google (verb)

The transitive verb to google refers to using the Google search engine to obtain information on the Web. However, it can also be used as a general term for searching the internet using any search engine, not just Google...

the reference number K40506A on the morning of July 26, they found the Caltech observation logs of Haumea, but according to their account, those logs contained too little information for Ortiz to tell if they were the same object.
The Ortiz team also checked with the Minor Planet Center

Minor Planet Center

The Minor Planet Center operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory , which is part of the Center for Astrophysics along with the Harvard College Observatory ....

(MPC), which had no record of this object. Wanting to establish priority, they emailed the MPC with their discovery on the night of July 27, 2005, titled "Big TNO discovery, urgent", without making any mention of the Caltech logs. The next morning they again accessed the Caltech logs, including observations from several additional nights. They then asked Reiner Stoss at the amateur Astronomical Observatory of Mallorca

Mallorca

Majorca or Mallorca is an island located in the Mediterranean Sea, one of the Balearic Islands.The capital of the island, Palma, is also the capital of the autonomous community of the Balearic Islands. The Cabrera Archipelago is administratively grouped with Majorca...

for further observations. Stoss found precovery

Precovery

Precovery is a term used in astronomy that describes the process of finding the image of an object in old archived images or photographic plates, for the purpose of calculating a more accurate orbit...

images of Haumea in digitized Palomar Observatory

Palomar Observatory

slides from 1955, and located Haumea with his own telescope that night, July 28. Within an hour, the Ortiz team submitted a second report to the MPC that included this new data. Again, no mention was made of having accessed the Caltech logs. The data was published by the MPC on July 29.

In a press release on the same day, the Ortiz team called Haumea the "tenth planet". On July 29, 2005, Haumea was given its first official label, the temporary designation 2003 EL₆₁, with the "2003" based on the date of the Spanish discovery image. On September 7, 2006, it was numbered and admitted into the official minor planet catalogue as (136108) 2003 EL₆₁.

Reaction to the announcement

The same day as the MPC publication, Brown's group announced the discovery of another Kuiper belt

Kuiper belt

The Kuiper belt , sometimes called the Edgeworth–Kuiper belt, is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets extending from the orbit of Neptune to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, although it is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive...

object, , more distant and larger than Pluto

Pluto

Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

, as the tenth planet. The announcement was made earlier than planned to forestall the possibility of a similar events with that discovery, when the MPC told them that their observational data was publicly accessible, and they realized that not only Haumea data but by that time their Eris data had been publicly accessed. The same day Ortiz announced the discovery of Haumea, Brown submitted his own draft with the data on the first of its moons that he had discovered on January 26, 2005 to The Astrophysical Journal.

Brown, though disappointed at being scooped

Scoop (term)

Scoop is an informal term used in journalism. The word connotes originality, importance, surprise or excitement, secrecy and exclusivity.Stories likely considered to be scoops are important news, likely to interest or concern many people. A scoop is typically a new story, or a new aspect to an...

, congratulated the Ortiz team on their discovery. He apologized for immediately overshadowing their announcement of Haumea with his announcement of Eris, and explained that someone had accessed their data and he was afraid of being scooped again. Ortiz did not volunteer to tell that it had been him. Upon learning from web server

Web server

Web server can refer to either the hardware or the software that helps to deliver content that can be accessed through the Internet....

records that it was a computer at the Sierra Nevada Observatory that had accessed his observation logs the day before the discovery announcement—logs which included enough information to allow the Ortiz team to precover

Precovery

Haumea in their 2003 images—Brown came to suspect fraud. He emailed Ortiz on August 9 and asked for an explanation. Ortiz did not respond, and on August 15 the Caltech team filed a formal complaint with the IAU, accusing the Ortiz team of a serious breach of scientific ethics in failing to acknowledge their use of the Caltech data, and asked the MPC to strip them of discovery status. Ortiz later admitted he had accessed the Caltech observation logs but denied any wrongdoing, stating this was merely part of verifying whether they had discovered a new object. Brown began to wonder if the Spanish team had actually identified Haumea at all before they saw his own abstract and telescope log.

Official naming

IAU protocol is that discovery credit for a minor planet

Minor planet

An asteroid group or minor-planet group is a population of minor planets that have a share broadly similar orbits. Members are generally unrelated to each other, unlike in an asteroid family, which often results from the break-up of a single asteroid...

goes to whoever first submits a report to the MPC with enough positional data for a decent orbit determination, and that the credited discoverer has priority in naming it. This was Ortiz et al., and they proposed the name Ataecina, an Iberian

Iberian Peninsula

The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...

goddess of the underworld

Underworld

The Underworld is a region which is thought to be under the surface of the earth in some religions and in mythologies. It could be a place where the souls of the recently departed go, and in some traditions it is identified with Hell or the realm of death...

. She is the equivalent of Roman

Roman mythology

Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans...

goddess Proserpina

Proserpina

Proserpina or Proserpine is an ancient Roman goddess whose story is the basis of a myth of Springtime. Her Greek goddess' equivalent is Persephone. The probable origin of her name comes from the Latin, "proserpere" or "to emerge," in respect to the growing of grain...

, which was in turn one of Pluto

Pluto (mythology)

In ancient Greek religion and myth, Pluto was a name for the ruler of the underworld; the god was also known as Hades, a name for the underworld itself...

s lovers—after whom the dwarf planet Pluto

Pluto

Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...

was named. However, as a chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...

deity, Ataecina would only have been an appropriate name for an object in orbital resonance

Orbital resonance

In celestial mechanics, an orbital resonance occurs when two orbiting bodies exert a regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other, usually due to their orbital periods being related by a ratio of two small integers. Orbital resonances greatly enhance the mutual gravitational influence of...

with Neptune

Neptune

Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Named for the Roman god of the sea, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times...

.

Following guidelines established by the IAU that classical Kuiper belt objects be given names of mythological beings associated with creation, in September 2006 the Caltech team submitted formal names from Hawaiian mythology

Hawaiian mythology

Hawaiian mythology refers to the legends, historical tales and sayings of the ancient Hawaiian people. It is considered a variant of a more general Polynesian mythology, developing its own unique character for several centuries before about 1800. It is associated with the Hawaiian religion...

to the IAU for both (136108) 2003 EL₆₁ and its moons, in order "to pay homage to the place where the satellites were discovered". The names were proposed by David Rabinowitz

David L. Rabinowitz

David Lincoln Rabinowitz is a researcher at Yale University. He has built CCD cameras and software for the detection of near-Earth asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects, and his research has helped reduce the assumed number of near-Earth asteroids by half, from 1,000-2,000 to 500-1,000 He has also...

of the Caltech team. Haumea is the matron goddess of the island of Hawaii

Hawaii (island)

The Island of Hawaii, also called the Big Island or Hawaii Island , is a volcanic island in the North Pacific Ocean...

, where the Mauna Kea Observatory

Mauna Kea Observatory

The Observatories at Mauna Kea, , are an independent collection of astronomical research facilities located on the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawai'i, USA. The facilities are located in a special land use zone known as the "Astronomy Precinct," which is located in the Mauna Kea...

is located. In addition, she is identified with Pāpā

Papahanaumoku

Papahanaumoku , or Pāpā, is the name of the Kanaka Maoli creator goddess in Hawaiian mythology. Together with her husband Wakea Pāpā is the ancestor of all people and Kalo, and mother of islands as the Kanaka Maoli manifestation of Mother Earth...

, the goddess of the earth and wife of Wākea

Wakea

In Hawaiian mythology, Wākea is the eldest son of Kahiko , and lives in Olalowaia. Wākea is the ancestor of the aristocracy, the ali‘i. The priests and common people come from his brothers. In another legend, Wākea lives in Hihiku and marries Pāpā, also called Pāpā-nui or Pāpā-nui-hanau-moku, who...

(space), which is appropriate because 2003 EL₆₁ is thought to be composed almost entirely of solid rock, without the thick ice mantle over a small rocky core typical of other known Kuiper belt objects. Lastly, Haumea is the goddess of fertility and childbirth, with many children who sprang from different parts of her body; this corresponds to the swarm of icy bodies

Haumea family

thought to have broken off the dwarf planet during an ancient collision. The two known moons, also believed to have been born in this manner, are thus were named after two of Haumea's daughters, Hiiaka

Hi'iaka

In Hawaiian mythology, Hiiaka is a daughter of Haumea and Kāne. She was the patron goddess of Hawaii and the hula dancers, and takes on the task of bearing the clouds - variously, those of storms and those produced by her sister's volcanos, and lived in a grove of Lehua trees which are sacred to...

and Nāmaka

Namaka

In Hawaiian mythology, Nāmaka appears as a sea goddess or a water spirit in the Pele cycle. She is an older sister of Pele-honua-mea. She is the daughter of Ku-waha-ilo and Haumea, whose other children are Pele, the Hiiaka sisters, the Kama brothers, and the bird Halulu...

.

The dispute over who had actually discovered the object delayed the acceptance of any name, or of formal classification of the object as a dwarf planet. On 17 September 2008, the IAU announced that the two bodies in charge of naming dwarf planets, the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN) and the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN), had decided on the Caltech proposal of Haumea. At the CSBN, the outcome of the voting was very close, eventually being decided by a single vote. However, the date of the discovery was listed on the announcement as March 7, 2003, the location of discovery as the Sierra Nevada Observatory, and the name of the discoverer was left blank.

Aftermath

Brian Marsden, head of the MPC at Harvard, openly supported Brown's claim saying that "Sooner or later, posterity will realise what happened, and Mike Brown will get the full credit". He also went on to state, in reference to the name of the discoverer, which was left blank in the IAU listing, that "It's deliberately vague about the discoverer of the object [...] We don't want to cause an international incident." He called the whole controversy the worst since the early 17th century dispute over who found the four biggest satellites

Galilean moons

The Galilean moons are the four moons of Jupiter discovered by Galileo Galilei in January 1610. They are the largest of the many moons of Jupiter and derive their names from the lovers of Zeus: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Ganymede, Europa and Io participate in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance...

of Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

between Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...

and Simon Marius

Simon Marius

Simon Marius was a German astronomer. He was born in Gunzenhausen, near Nuremberg, but he spent most of his life in the city of Ansbach....

, ultimately won by Galilei.

The Ortiz team has objected, suggesting that if Ataecina were not accepted the IAU could at least have chosen a third name favoring neither party, and accusing the IAU of political bias. Rumors appeared that Dagda

Dagda

The Dagda is an important god of Irish mythology.Dagda can also refer to:*Dagda, Latvia, a city in eastern Latvia*Dagda , an Irish New Age band...

, the name of a god from Irish mythology and a "neutral" name, was indeed proposed by a member of the CSBM but was not used in the end. Ortiz went to say "I am not happy, I think the [IAU] decision is unfortunate and sets a bad precedent." Spanish media went on to call the decision a "US conquest", asserting that politics played a major role as the US had 10 times more scientists in the IAU than Spain had.

Immediately after the announcement of the name, Brown noted that it is unusual to be allowed to name the object without being acknowledged as the official discoverer but declared that he is pleased with the outcome and that he "think[s] this is as good a resolution as we'll get". He did get full recognition for the discovery of the two moons, Hiiaka

Hi'iaka (moon)

Hiiaka is the larger, outer moon of the dwarf planet Haumea.- Discovery and naming :Hiiaka was the first satellite discovered around Haumea. It is named after one of the daughters of Haumea, Hiiaka, the patron goddess of the Big Island of Hawaii, though at first it had gone by the nickname...

and Namaka

Namaka (moon)

Namaka is the smaller, inner moon of the dwarf planet Haumea. It is named after Nāmaka, one of the daughters of Haumea, the goddess of the sea in Hawaiian mythology.- Discovery :Namaka was discovered on 30 June 2005 and announced on November 29, 2005...

. On the fifth anniversary of the discovery he wrote a blog with his thoughts on the importance of the discovery, but did not mention any events regarding the controversy.

External links

Mike Brown's Planets: Haumea Mike Brown's blog on the controversy
La historia de Ataecina vs Haumea Pablo Sanz's account of what happened
The electronic trail of the discovery of 2003 EL61 A Caltech timeline of the Spanish discovery announcements and access of the Caltech observation logs
2007 KCET interview of Mike Brown about Eris and Haumea with Julia Sweeney
Aloha, Haumea Blog on NationalGeographic.com on the events surrounding the naming process

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