Controversy Over The Discovery of Haumea - Aftermath

Aftermath

Brian Marsden, head of the MPC at Harvard, and a friend of Brown's, openly supported Brown's claim saying that "Sooner or later, posterity will realise what happened, and Mike Brown will get the full credit". He also went on to state, in reference to the name of the discoverer, which was left blank in the IAU listing, that "It's deliberately vague about the discoverer of the object We don't want to cause an international incident." He called the whole controversy the worst since the early 17th century dispute over who found the four biggest satellites of Jupiter between Galileo Galilei and Simon Marius, ultimately won by Galileo.

The Ortiz team has objected, suggesting that if Ataecina were not accepted the IAU could at least have chosen a third name favoring neither party, and accusing the IAU of political bias. Rumors appeared that Dagda, the name of a god from Irish mythology and a "neutral" name, was indeed proposed by a member of the CSBM but was not used in the end. Ortiz went to say "I am not happy, I think the decision is unfortunate and sets a bad precedent." Spanish media went on to call the decision a "US conquest", asserting that politics played a major role as the US had 10 times more scientists in the IAU than Spain had.

Immediately after the announcement of the name, Brown noted that it is unusual to be allowed to name an object without being acknowledged as its official discoverer but declared that he is pleased with the outcome and that he "think this is as good a resolution as we'll get". He did get full recognition for the discovery of the two moons, Hiʻiaka and Namaka. On the fifth anniversary of the discovery he wrote a blog with his thoughts on the importance of the discovery, but did not mention any events regarding the controversy.