Name for 2003 EL61, Welcome Haumea, Hi'iaka, and Namaka to the Solar System Options

[volcanopele]

No, it's not Santa (or was this one Easter Bunny). Everyone's favorite egg-shaped world now has a name: Haumea, from Hawaiian mythology. Haumea's two moons have been named Hi'iaka (still one of my favorite volcanoes on Io, along with Gish Bar, Thor, and Tvashtar) and Namaka, both daughters of Haumea. Of course, this opens up the possibility that a third moon would be named Pele.

Definitely prefer this to Makemake.

[Vultur]

That is a weird-looking thing. Looks sort of like Mesklin from Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity".

I wonder if New Horizons will find other oddly shaped KBOs?

[Mark6]

That is a weird-looking thing. Looks sort of like Mesklin from Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity".

I would say even weirder. Mesklin was shaped like a freesbie, which more or less makes sense -- a rapidly spinning sphere flattens out, thus its rotation slows down to preserve angular momentum until equilibrium is reached. But Haumea is an elongated ellipsoid with longest axis in equatorial plane, like an egg spinning on a tabletop. Like Larry Niven's Jinx, it is a planet with an "East Pole" and "West Pole", in addition to North and South poles. Such shape is stable, and it likewise preserves angular momentum if you started out with a too-fast spinning sphere -- but how did it get to be that way instead of just a flattened disk? I wonder if Haumea is actually a contact binary?