Controversy over the discovery of Haumea

Lore & Background

On December 28, 2004, Mike Brown and his team discovered Haumea on images taken with the 1.3 m SMARTS Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, though they had originally imaged it on May 6, 2004, from Palomar Observatory. Brown kept the discovery quiet while studying its nature, including finding its moons and a family of icy TNOs. On July 20, 2005, the Caltech team published an online abstract of a report intended to announce the discovery at a conference, referring to a 'bright Kuiper belt object' without giving its designation. Around that time, Pablo Santos Sanz, a student of José Luis Ortiz Moreno, claimed to have found Haumea in images from March 2003. The Spanish team accessed Caltech's observation logs via Google on July 26, 2005, then submitted discovery reports to the Minor Planet Center on July 27 and 28, without mentioning the Caltech logs. The MPC published the data on July 29, 2005, and the Spanish team issued a press release that same day; the media, not the team, labeled Haumea the 'tenth planet'.

Reader's Guide

The controversy over Haumea's discovery is significant because it exposed tensions in the astronomical community over credit, data access, and the ethics of using publicly available observations. Brown accused the Spanish team of fraud for using Caltech observations without credit, while Ortiz accused the American team of political interference with the IAU. The IAU ultimately recognized the Caltech team's proposed name, Haumea, over the Spanish team's Ataecina in September 2008. The dispute delayed the official naming of the dwarf planet and highlighted the challenges of establishing priority in an era of digital data sharing. It also underscored the importance of clear protocols for discovery credit, as the IAU's rule that credit goes to the first submitter of a report with sufficient positional data was followed, but the circumstances of the Spanish team's access to Caltech logs remained contested.

Did You Know?

• Ceres was discovered in 1801 and later reclassified as a dwarf planet, so Eris (found in 2005, recognized in 2006) was the first such object discovered since Pluto in 1930, predating Haumea's recognition in 2008.
• The Caltech team used the nickname 'Santa' for Haumea because they discovered it just after Christmas.
• The Spanish team proposed the name Ataecina, an Iberian goddess of the underworld.
• The Caltech team's proposed name Haumea is the tutelary goddess of the island of Hawaiʻi, where the Mauna Kea Observatory is located.