New Moons of Pluto
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope discover that Pluto, the ninth planet is our solar system, may have not one, but three moons.
Picture: An artist's concept of the Pluto system as seen from the surface of one of the candidate moons.
Pluto was discovered in 1930. It is 3 billion miles away form sun in the heart of the Kupiter Belt, a vast region of icy, rocky bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit. Charon, Pluto’s moon, was discovered in 1978.
"If, as our new Hubble images indicate, Pluto has not one, but two or three moons, it will become the first body in the Kuiper Belt known to have more than one satellite," said Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. He is co-leader of the team that made the discovery.
New moons are 44,000 km away from Pluto, and that is two or three times more far than Pluto – Charon
These are tiny moons. Their estimated diameters lie between 64 and 200 kilometers. Charon, for comparison, is about 1170 km wide, while Pluto itself has a diameter of about 2270 km.
Two new moon candidate are seen with Hubble on May 15, 2005. Three days later, Hubble looked at Pluto again. The two objects were still there and appeared to be moving in orbit around Pluto
The team look for any other moons around Pluto but didn’t find nothing.
Picture: Hubble Space Telescope images taken in May 2005 show the candidate moons apparently rotating counterclockwise around Pluto.
Picture: An artist's concept of the Pluto system as seen from the surface of one of the candidate moons.Pluto was discovered in 1930. It is 3 billion miles away form sun in the heart of the Kupiter Belt, a vast region of icy, rocky bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit. Charon, Pluto’s moon, was discovered in 1978.
"If, as our new Hubble images indicate, Pluto has not one, but two or three moons, it will become the first body in the Kuiper Belt known to have more than one satellite," said Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Md. He is co-leader of the team that made the discovery.
New moons are 44,000 km away from Pluto, and that is two or three times more far than Pluto – Charon
These are tiny moons. Their estimated diameters lie between 64 and 200 kilometers. Charon, for comparison, is about 1170 km wide, while Pluto itself has a diameter of about 2270 km.
Two new moon candidate are seen with Hubble on May 15, 2005. Three days later, Hubble looked at Pluto again. The two objects were still there and appeared to be moving in orbit around Pluto
The team look for any other moons around Pluto but didn’t find nothing.
Picture: Hubble Space Telescope images taken in May 2005 show the candidate moons apparently rotating counterclockwise around Pluto.
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