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Haumea

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DWARF PLANET

Haumea

A rugby-ball-shaped dwarf planet with two moons and a ring — one of the strangest bodies known.

Orbits Sun Ring System 2 moons
  • Rotates once every 3.9 hours u2014 fastest of any body u2265100 km.
  • Rotation spin has stretched it into an ellipsoid ~2,322 u00d7 1,704 u00d7 1,026 km.
  • First known dwarf planet with a ring (discovered 2017).

Physical Properties

816 km
4.006e21 kg
2.6 g/cm³
3.9155 h
0.66
32 K

Orbit

Sun
43.13 AU
0.19126
28.22°
284.12 yr

Ring System

One narrow ring discovered in 2017 via stellar occultation — first ring system known around a dwarf planet.

Notable Moons

Sources & Further Reading

Numerical values (radius, mass, orbital elements, temperatures) are drawn from NASA NSSDC Planetary Fact Sheets, JPL Horizons, and the JPL Small-Body Database. Last refreshed: 2026-04-18 18:19:25.

Haumea is one of the most peculiar objects in the outer Solar System. Its extreme rotation period — just under 4 hours — has deformed its shape into a triaxial ellipsoid, with the long axis ~2,322 km and the short axis about 1,026 km. Haumea has two known moons (Hi’iaka and Namaka), both believed to have formed from a giant impact that also set Haumea spinning and launched fragments that together form the “Haumean collisional family” of KBOs. In 2017, a stellar-occultation campaign revealed the first ring system known around any dwarf planet.