Our solar system can add another moon to its roster. On the frozen fringes, in the Kuiper Belt, a tiny moon orbits the dwarf planet known as Makemake.

On Tuesday, scientists announced the discovery by some members of the team that spotted Pluto's smaller moons years ago: the Hubble Space Telescope has detected a tiny, dark moon circling the dwarf planet.

Makemake itself is just 870 miles wide. Its moon — dubbed MK2 — is a mere 100 miles across and more than 1,300 times fainter with its black surface. Makemake is named after the creation deity in the Rapa Nui mythology of Easter Island.

This Hubble image reveals the first moon ever discovered around the dwarf planet Makemake. The tiny satellite, located just above Makemake in this image, is barely visible because it is almost lost in the glare of the very bright dwarf planet. Hubble’s sharp-eyed WFC3 made the observation in April 2015. (NASA, ESA, and A. Parker and M. Buie (SwRI))

Hubble's wide-field camera made the observations last April, spotting MK2 13,000 miles from Makemake. Previous searches were unsuccessful because of the glare from Makemake. Further observations will be needed to determine if MK2's orbit is circular or oval.

(MORE: Astronomers Spot Galaxy 13.4 Billion Light-Years Away, a Cosmic Distance Record)

Scientists said the discovery is further evidence that most dwarf planets way out in the Kuiper Belt — well beyond the orbit of Neptune — do, indeed, seem to have moons. MK2 will allow researchers to study Makemake in even greater detail, said Alex Parker of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who led the image analyses.

"It is a very exciting discovery!" Parker said in an email. "It means that Makemake is no longer the odd-one-out in the moon-hosting Kuiper Belt dwarf planet club, and it means that we can do detailed studies of the mass and density of Makemake that would have been impossible without the moon."

Makemake is second to Pluto in brightness among the dwarf planets known to inhabit the Kuiper Belt.

MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Top 100 NASA Hubble Images

April 24 marks the 25th anniversary of the Hubble Telescope. To celebrate, NASA and the European Space Agency, which jointly run the telecope, released this image of the star cluster Westerlund 2. (NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team/A. Nota/Westerlund 2 Science Team)