About the image. Drawn as a reddish-brown icy world with its small, dark moon. Makemake has never been seen as more than a point of light; its colour follows measurements, its surface is imagined, and the moon is drawn closer than its real orbit.
Makemake was found at Palomar Observatory just after Easter in 2005 by Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz, and nicknamed “Easterbunny” by the team. Its official name, announced in 2008, honours the creator god of the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island. At about 1 430 kilometres across, it is one of the largest known worlds beyond Neptune.
A methane world
Makemake is bright, reflecting about 82% of the light that falls on it, and reddish-brown. Its surface is dominated by frozen methane, together with ethane, acetylene and other hydrocarbons formed when sunlight and cosmic rays break the methane down. The reddish tint comes from tholins, darker organic compounds built up the same way.
With so much methane ice, astronomers expected Makemake to have a thin atmosphere like Pluto’s. In 2011 they watched it pass in front of a star. The star blinked out and back abruptly, with none of the gradual fading an atmosphere would cause. Any global atmosphere has to be extremely thin.
A puff of gas
In 2025 Silvia Protopapa and colleagues reported that the James Webb Space Telescope had detected methane gas at Makemake, glowing as it absorbed and re-emitted sunlight. It is only the second world beyond Neptune, after Pluto, where gas has been confirmed. Whether it is a very thin atmosphere or gas escaping from the surface is not yet known.
The hidden moon
For more than a decade Makemake seemed to have no moon. Then in April 2016 a team using the Hubble Space Telescope announced a faint companion, nicknamed MK2, in images from 2015. It is very dark, much darker than Makemake, which is probably why it was missed for so long. It circles Makemake about every 18 days. Its orbit gives Makemake’s mass, about 2.7 × 10²¹ kilograms.
Makemake takes about 307 years to orbit the Sun, between 38 and 53 AU.
How far out it would be
Makemake goes around once every 307 years, at 45.499 AU from its star. Dashed circles show Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune around the Sun, on the same scale.
Earth days passing: 0
Your weight on Makemake
On Makemake
Gravity there is about 0.04× Earth's. Calculated from the measured mass and radius.
Gallery
A reddish-brown world with a mottled frosty surface and a small dark moon at its edge, lit by the Sun as a bright star, an impression of the dwarf planet Makemake. AI-generated painting.A wide, rough plain of reddish frost stretching to a flat horizon under a black sky, with the Sun only a small bright star above it, an impression of the surface of Makemake. AI-generated painting.Makemake, 3D artist's impression, rendered from the interactive model.Makemake, 3D artist's impression, from another angle, rendered from the interactive model.Makemake, 3D artist's impression, close-up, rendered from the interactive model.
Timeline
2005Discovered at Palomar just after Easter.
2008Named after the Rapa Nui creator god.
2011A stellar occultation shows no global atmosphere.
2016Its dark moon MK2 is announced.
2025JWST detects methane gas.
Questions people ask
Does Makemake have an atmosphere?
Not a substantial global one, but JWST detected methane gas there in 2025.
Does Makemake have a moon?
Yes, a small dark moon nicknamed MK2, found in 2016.
How big is Makemake?
About 1 430 km across, about 60% of the width of Pluto.