Makemake

Imagine a giant, icy ball spinning around the Sun, way, way out past the planet Neptune. That's Makemake! It's a dwarf planet, which means it's round like a planet, but it hasn't cleared its neighborhood of other space rocks.

Makemake is super cold and dark out there, much colder than your freezer! It's so far away that it takes a very, very long time for sunlight to reach it. It's a bit smaller than Earth's moon, but still a huge chunk of ice and rock floating in space.

Makemake wasn't always known to us. Scientists with big telescopes were looking very carefully at the sky, searching for new things beyond Neptune. In 2005, a team of astronomers spotted it! They were so excited to find this new dwarf planet. It took them a little while to be sure it was really there and to learn more about it. It's like finding a hidden treasure in the backyard, but in space!

Makemake is special because it's one of the biggest dwarf planets we know of in its part of the solar system. It's like being one of the tallest kids on the playground! It helps scientists understand how our solar system formed and how things move around the Sun.

Plus, it has a moon, which is like having a little buddy orbiting around it. This moon helps us learn even more about Makemake's size and weight.

Makemake lives in a place called the Kuiper Belt. This is like a giant donut-shaped ring of icy objects way beyond Neptune. Think of it as a cosmic ice rink!

It's so far from the Sun that its surface is probably around -380 degrees Fahrenheit (-229 degrees Celsius). Brrr! It takes Makemake about 306 Earth years to go around the Sun just once.

That means if you lived on Makemake, you'd have a birthday only once every 306 years!