Haumea Trivia
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50 free Haumea trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Haumea trivia quiz covers the strangest of the dwarf planets: a body the length of Pluto and half as tall, spinning once every four hours, wrapped in crystalline ice, ringed, and trailing a family of fragments from an ancient collision. It starts with the tangled discovery, Mike Brown's Caltech team finding it just after Christmas 2004 and nicknaming it Santa, José Luis Ortiz's Spanish team announcing first from 2003 images, the accusation over accessed observation logs, and the IAU's Solomon-like choice of the Hawaiian name over Ataecina. The science section covers the egg shape and what would happen if it spun faster, the 2017 stellar occultation that revealed the first ring beyond Neptune, the snow-bright surface and its dark red spot, the moons Hiʻiaka and Namaka once called Rudolph and Blitzen, the 285-year orbit and 7:12 resonance with Neptune, the collisional family and the distant looks New Horizons has taken. It ends with the mythology: the fertility goddess whose children sprang from her body, her daughter Pele the volcano goddess, and the patron of hula. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on each question, so it suits a classroom, a pub quiz or a space enthusiast. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our Pluto, Eris and Solar System quizzes for more.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Where in the Solar System does the dwarf planet Haumea orbit?
In the Kuiper belt
In the Kuiper belt: Haumea circles about 43 times farther from the Sun than Earth does, which keeps its surface below minus 220 degrees Celsius, far too cold for life as we know it.
Q 02Haumea is named after a goddess from the mythology of which Pacific islands?
Hawaii
Hawaii: the team put the name forward in 2006, but approval took two years while astronomers argued over who had really found the object.
Q 03The goddess Haumea presides over what?
Childbirth and fertility
Childbirth and fertility: in one story she stops a chief's daughter from being cut open to deliver, gives her a remedy instead, and so teaches people natural birth.
Q 04Haumea spins once about every four hours, which has distorted it into what?
An elongated, egg-like ellipsoid shape
An elongated, egg-like ellipsoid shape: astronomers first worked it out without seeing it, from the way Haumea's brightness rises and falls as it turns end-on and then side-on.
Q 05How did astronomers best measure Haumea's size and shape in 2017?
By watching it cross a star
By watching it cross a star: telescopes at several observatories timed how long the starlight vanished, and each timing traced one slice across Haumea's outline.
Q 06How was Namaka, the smaller of Haumea's two satellites, discovered?
In images tracking the first moon
In images tracking the first moon: the team was photographing Haumea to follow Hiʻiaka, found five months earlier, when a fainter second speck turned up beside it.
Q 07What was discovered around Haumea in 2017, a first for any dwarf planet?
A ring
A ring: until 2014 only the four giant planets were known to have rings, and Haumea was the first world of its kind found with one.
Q 08In the myths, what does the goddess Haumea use her magical stick, the Mākālei, to do?
Turn herself young again
Turn herself young again: she returns as a girl to marry among her own descendants, generation after generation, which makes her the ancestress of each new line of chiefs.
Q 09In 2008 the IAU coined which term for distant dwarf planets such as Haumea?
Plutoid
Plutoid: the label arrived three months before Haumea's own name, and Ceres is the only dwarf planet it leaves out.
Q 10Haumea's two moons are named after which relatives of the goddess Haumea?
Her daughters
Her daughters: in the stories the two stand on opposite sides of a third sister, one cherished by her from infancy and the other her relentless pursuer.
Q 11What festive nicknames did the discovery team first give Haumea and its two moons?
Santa, Rudolph and Blitzen
Santa, Rudolph and Blitzen: the team first spotted the object on 28 December 2004, just after Christmas, and kept the theme when its moons turned up the following year.
Q 12The telescope that found Haumea's moons fired a laser skyward to correct for what?
The blurring of Earth's air
The blurring of Earth's air: the laser makes an artificial guide star, letting the mirror cancel the atmosphere's shimmer and match the sharpness of a telescope in space.
Q 13Which Caltech astronomer led the team that spotted Haumea in December 2004?
Q 21What large feature was detected on Haumea's surface in 2009?
A dark red spot
A dark red spot: no telescope can see it as a shape, and it shows only as a slight change of colour in Haumea's light each time that side turns into view.
Q 22Haumea was the first of today's official dwarf planets to be found since which one?
Pluto
Pluto: nothing else in the class had turned up since 1930, and then the Caltech survey found three within about three months, starting with Haumea.
Q 23Haumea's faint heat glow, which helped to fix its size, was measured by which space telescope?
Spitzer
Spitzer: working in the infrared, it caught the warmth of a surface colder than minus 220 degrees Celsius, which showed how much sunlight Haumea absorbs instead of reflecting.
Mike Brown
Mike Brown: his survey turned up so many rivals to Pluto that the ninth planet was reclassified, a story he tells in his memoir How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming.
Q 14Being scooped on Haumea pushed the Caltech team to rush out news of which larger find in July 2005?
Eris
Eris: at first billed as a tenth planet, it forced the 2006 vote that created the dwarf-planet class Haumea later joined.
Q 15What did the Caltech team leader accuse the Spanish team of doing before their announcement?
Accessing his observation logs online
Accessing his observation logs online: the rival leader later admitted looking at the logs but denied any wrongdoing, saying he was only checking whether the object was new.
Q 16Haumea's old designation, 2003 EL61, takes its year from what?
The Spanish images
The Spanish images: they were taken in March 2003 but only searched in July 2005, seven months after Caltech had quietly spotted the same object.
Q 17Ataecina, the rival name proposed for Haumea, belonged to an Iberian goddess linked with which realm?
The underworld
The underworld: naming rules keep underworld deities for bodies in one particular orbital resonance, which Haumea is not in, so the name would not have fitted.
Q 18Which team does the IAU officially credit with discovering Haumea?
Neither team
Neither team: the official record gives the Spanish observatory as the place of discovery but names no discoverer, while the name itself was the one Caltech proposed.
Q 19Haumea's surface is covered mostly in what?
Crystalline water ice
Crystalline water ice: the find is odd, because at Haumea's temperature ice should settle into a disordered form, which hints that something keeps resurfacing it.
Q 20Haumea's surface is about as reflective as what?
Snow
Snow: a bright speck can be a big dull world or a small shiny one, so Haumea's size stayed uncertain for years, and the best measurement found it larger and less shiny than first thought.
Q 24About how long does Haumea take to travel once around the Sun?
About 300 years
About 300 years: NASA makes it 285, because Haumea circles some 43 times farther from the Sun than Earth does.
Q 25Haumea's orbit is unstable over the very long run; what could it become in a billion years or so?
A giant comet
A giant comet: if its unstable orbit ever sends it sunward, its co-discoverer reckons it could shine 10,000 times brighter than Hale-Bopp, about as bright as the full Moon.
Q 26Haumea's fast spin, odd shape and moons are all thought to result from what?
A giant collision
A giant collision: the glancing blow is thought to have knocked off most of Haumea's icy outer layer, and a handful of those chunks still travel on orbits like its own.
Q 27How did the Caltech team's leader first respond when the rival team announced Haumea in 2005?
He congratulated them
He congratulated them, and even apologised for overshadowing their news with an announcement of his own the same day; his suspicions came only weeks later.
Q 28Which spacecraft observed Haumea from afar in 2007, 2017 and 2020?
New Horizons
New Horizons: looking back from far out in the Solar System, the probe saw Haumea lit from angles no telescope near Earth can reach, which showed how its surface scatters sunlight.
Q 29What is the smallest instrument that can show Haumea from Earth?
A big amateur telescope
A big amateur telescope: at about magnitude 17, Haumea is one of the brightest bodies of its kind, yet it is still thousands of times too faint for the unaided eye.
Q 30About how long does Haumea's outer moon take to circle it once?
About 7 weeks
About 7 weeks: the moon circles so far out that one lap takes 49 days, where Pluto's big moon Charon whips round in about six.