News Planetary Science

Dwarf planet Makemake sports the most remote gas in the solar system

The newly reported methane is way more tenuous than Pluto’s atmosphere — not to mention Earth’s

An artist’s rendering of the dwarf planet Makemake with its small moon in the foreground. The reddish, pitted surface of Makemake is partially in shadow. The sun, seen as a bright star, and the faint band of the Milky Way stretch across the background.

Boasting the most distant gas ever seen in our solar system, Makemake (illustrated) huddles with its moon in the frigid depths of space, beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto.

NASA, ESA, A. Parker/Southwest Research Institute

By Ken Croswell

More than 2 billion kilometers farther from the sun than Pluto, a frigid world named Makemake sports the most distant gas ever seen in our solar system, new observations reveal.