Hubble Telescope Finds a New Moon Orbiting Pluto As moons go, it is tiny -- only an estimated 8 to 21 miles across, compared to Pluto's largest moon, Charon, which is 648 miles across. It is located between Nix and Hydra, which range from 20 to 70 miles.

The new moon was first seen on June 28 in a photo taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and confirmed in subsequent Hubble pictures taken on July 3 and July 18. For now, scientists are calling it P4.

"I find it remarkable that Hubble's cameras enabled us to see such a tiny object so clearly from a distance of more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km)," said Mark Showalter (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubbl ... -moon.html) of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who led the observing program with the Hubble.

Pluto was long considered the ninth planet in our solar system, but was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. The downgrade came after the word "planet" was for the first time defined as an object in the solar system that must be round, must orbit a star, and must clear out its neighborhood.

They may have taken our planet away but it now has 4 moons. Planet NO Big rock with moons YES.

Bring back Pluto as a planet, we miss it, right Moi?

River

Riverwind (imported) wrote: Fri Jul 22, 2011 3:58 pm Hubble Telescope Finds a New Moon Orbiting Pluto As moons go, it is tiny -- only an estimated 8 to 21 miles across, compared to Pluto's largest moon, Charon, which is 648 miles across. It is located between Nix and Hydra, which range from 20 to 70 miles.

The new moon was first seen on June 28 in a photo taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and confirmed in subsequent Hubble pictures taken on July 3 and July 18. For now, scientists are calling it P4.

"I find it remarkable that Hubble's cameras enabled us to see such a tiny object so clearly from a distance of more than 3 billion miles (5 billion km)," said Mark Showalter (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubbl ... -moon.html) of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who led the observing program with the Hubble.

Pluto was long considered the ninth planet in our solar system, but was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. The downgrade came after the word "planet" was for the first time defined as an object in the solar system that must be round, must orbit a star, and must clear out its neighborhood.

They may have taken our planet away but it now has 4 moons. Planet NO Big rock with moons YES.

Bring back Pluto as a planet, we miss it, right Moi?

River

River,

Right on and Stephan Colbert agrees. We must keep the pressure on. Pluto, #9 as a binary planet system so bigger object suffices for reference or Pluto/Charon in recognition of it's binary planet status, like Earth/Moon.

Those other things orbiting planets as are so very small compared to the largest object around should be termed moon, with a small "m".

If a planet of Sol, did not get named in the original nine, then tough luck, it is an object.

Please forward this on to those egg head astronomers. We have to set them right.

Any disagreements?

Moi

Pictures on the news -- the Pluto family

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110722.html

Here are Nix, Hydra, Charon and P4

You know someone at NASA also thinks Pluto is still a planet, why else would they point Hubble at it?

River

Because it's there...