Haamea is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt (a band of space
objects out beyond the orbit of Neptune) that was discovered in late 2004 by
CalTech astronomer Mike Brown and his team and in 2005 by Jose Luis Ortiz
Moreno and his team in Spain. (There is some controversy there, but it outside
the scope of this post.) Objects in the Kuiper belt are named after creation
deities, so Mike Brown’s team’s name, Huamea, was accepted over the Spanish
team’s name for the Dwarf Planet. They named the object Huamea after the
Hawaiian goddess, in honor of the place where they had first observed it.
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| Artist rendition of Haumea and its two moons (A. Field via StScI) |
As with many myths, Haumea is associated with many names and
stories. Some stories equate her with Papa (also Papahānaumoku), giving Papa as her human form to the spirit form
of Haumea. Papa, with her husband Wakea, is often said to be the origin of the
Hawaiian people, or sometimes the entire human race.
As Huamea, she is said to have given birth to a number of
children, not in the normal way, but from various parts of her body. Pele, the
goddess of volcanoes, sprang from her thighs while other children sprang from
her mouth or her forehead. She is considered the goddess of Childbirth and Fertility.
This giving of herself to make her children is also the
reason her name was picked for the Dwarf Planet. The DP Huamea was part of a
collision long ago, which resulted in Huamea’s moons, Ki’iaka and Namaka, named
for two of her daughters, and the dwarf planet’s oblong, rather than round,
shape.
The goddess Huamea was also said to have been able to change
her shape and age with the assistance of a variety of magical objects, some of
which she obtained in return for assisting people with births. Huamea is often
associated with the Kalihi Valley of Ohau, where she is said to have lived with
her husband Wakea, once saving him from death by hiding them both in a
breadfruit tree. The Kalihi Valley is now part of the suburbs of Honolulu and
these local stories are only remember by a few people.
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