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Controversy over the discovery of Haumea

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Main article: Haumea (dwarf planet)

Haumea was the first object currently classified as a dwarf planet to have been discovered since Pluto 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 Caltech team headed by Michael E. Brown in Hawaii first noticed the object, but a Spanish team headed by José Luis Ortiz Moreno 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 accuses the American team of political interference with the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Discovery

Michael E. Brown

On December 28, 2004, Mike Brown and his team discovered Haumea on images they had taken with the 1.3 m SMARTS Telescope on May 6, 2004, while looking for what he hoped would be the tenth planet. Haumea (or "Santa", as they nicknamed it at the time) clearly did not fit the bill, and Brown did not announce it. Instead he kept it under wraps, along with several other large trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), until through additional observation he could better determine their natures. When his team discovered Haumea's moons, 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, and concluded that these were remnants of Haumea's icy mantle, 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 put off the announcement for several weeks.[1] 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.[2]

At around that time, Pablo Santos Sanz, a student of José Luis Ortiz Moreno at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía at the Sierra Nevada Observatory 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 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.[3] The Ortiz team also checked with the Minor Planet Center (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, giving a discovery date of March 7, 2003, and making no 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 for further observations. Stoss found precovery images of Haumea in digitized Mount Palomar slides from 1955, and located Haumea with his own telescope that night, July 28. Within an hour,[2] 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.[4] The data was published by the MPC on July 29.[4] In a press release, the Ortiz team called Haumea the "tenth planet".[5]

Reaction

The same day as the MPC publication, Brown's group announced the discovery of another Kuiper belt object, Eris, more distant and larger than Pluto, as the tenth planet. The announcement was made earlier than planned to forestall the possibility of a similar controversy 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.[1]

Brown, though disappointed at being scooped, congratulated Ortiz 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 that it had been him. Upon learning from web server 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 Haumea in their 2003 images,—Brown came to suspect fraud. He emailed Ortiz and asked for an explanation. Ortiz did not respond, and on August 9 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.[6] 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.[7]

Naming

IAU protocol is that discovery credit for a minor planet 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.[3] However, as a chthonic deity, Ataecina would only have been an appropriate name for an object in orbital resonance with Neptune.[8] 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 name was decided by a single vote.[3] However, the location of discovery was listed on the announcement as the Sierra Nevada Observatory, and the name of the discoverer was left blank.[9][8] 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".[8] 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.

References

  1. ^ a b Mike Brown (2008-09-17). "Mike Brown's Planets: Haumea". Retrieved 2008-09-22.
  2. ^ a b Michael E Brown. "The electronic trail of the discovery of 2003 EL61". CalTech. Retrieved 2006-08-16.
  3. ^ a b c Pablo Santos Sanz (2008-26-09). "La historia de Ataecina vs Haumea". infoastro.com. Retrieved 2008-09-29. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) Template:Es icon
  4. ^ a b "Minor Planet Electronic Circular 2005-O36 : 2003 EL61". 2005-07-29. Retrieved 2008-09-23.
  5. ^ "Estados Unidos «conquista» Haumea". ABC.es news. 2008-09-20. Retrieved 2008-09-18. Template:Es icon
  6. ^ "One Find, Two Astronomers:An Ethical Brawl". New York Times. 2005-09-13. Retrieved 2006-08-16. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
  7. ^ "Astronomer denies improper use of web data". NewScientist.com. 2005-09-21. Retrieved 2006-08-16. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
  8. ^ a b c Rachel Courtland (2008-09-19). "Controversial dwarf planet finally named 'Haumea'". NewScientistSpace. Retrieved 2008-09-19.
  9. ^ Blue, Jennifer (2006-09-14). "2003 UB 313 named Eris". USGS Astrogeology Research Program. Retrieved 2007-01-05. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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