Scientists armed with the immense observing power of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have detected faint traces of fluorescent flatulence leaking out from the dwarf planet Makemake, which lurks in the outer reaches of the solar system. This is only the second time that a gas has been detected on an object this far from Earth, and hints that this wee world is far more active than we once thought.
Makemake is a roughly spherical object measuring around 890 miles (1,430 kilometers) across, which is less than half the diameter of the moon. It is located around 45 times further from the sun than Earth on average, in a region known as the Kuiper Belt — a ring of asteroids, comets and larger icy objects, such as Pluto, beyond the orbit of Neptune. It was discovered in 2005 and has a small moon, dubbed MK2, which is around 110 miles (175 km) across.
