Dwarf Planet Has No Atmosphere, New Look Suggests

Sindya N. Bhanoo reporting for The New York Times:

Not much is known about Makemake, a dwarf planet that circles the Sun beyond Pluto. But scientists got a closer glimpse of it last year, when it passed briefly in front of a star (an event called an occultation), and they report their findings in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Previously, researchers believed that because the surface temperature of Makemake (pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh) is heterogeneous, it might have an atmosphere. “If you have some patches with a higher temperature, the ice melts and creates vapor,” said an author of the new study, Noemi Pinilla-Alonso, a planetary scientist at the University of Tennessee. “And with vapor the planet can develop an atmosphere around it.”

But the new measurements — based on observations from multiple telescopes in different parts of South America — indicate that Makemake, like another dwarf planet, Eris, does not have a significant atmosphere.

I love the things we can figure out about astronomical bodies just by pointing telescopes at them.