Two new moons found around Pluto

[philly]

From torrentspy....via BBC

 

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted two possible new moons around Pluto, the ninth planet in the Solar System. If confirmed, it would bring Pluto's tally of satellites to three; Charon, the only known moon of Pluto, was discovered by astronomers in 1978.

 

Confirmation of two new moons would shed light on the evolution of the Kuiper Belt, the vast region containing icy objects beyond Neptune's orbit. All the candidate moons seem to orbit Pluto in an anti-clockwise direction.

 

The candidate moons, given the provisional names S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2, are between 45 and 160km (30 and 100 miles). By comparison, Charon's diameter is about 1,200 km. Observations suggest they orbit Pluto at at least twice the distance Charon does. P2 stays about 49,000km from the planet, P1 lies even further away at 65,000km. Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument observed the two new candidate moons on 15 May.

 

"The new satellite candidates are roughly 5,000 times fainter than Pluto, but they really stood out in these Hubble images," said Max Mutchler of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, and the first team member to identify the satellites.

 

Artist's impression of the Pluto system, Nasa/Space Telescope Science Institute Pluto resides beyond Neptune in the region known as the Kuiper Belt. Three days later, Hubble looked at Pluto again. The two objects were still there and appeared to be moving in orbit around Pluto.

 

"A re-examination of Hubble images taken on 14 June 2002 has essentially confirmed the presence of both P1 and P2 near the predicted locations based on the 2005 Hubble observations," added Marc Buie of the Lowell Observatory, in Flagstaff, Arizona, another member of the team.

 

The discovery would make Pluto the first Kuiper Belt object known to have more than one satellite. The team behind the discovery plans to make follow-up observations in February to confirm the objects really are new moons of Pluto. Only then can the International Astronomical Union, consider names for the candidate satellites. The researchers also looked for other potential moons around Pluto.

 

"These Hubble images represent the most sensitive search yet for objects around Pluto," said Andrew Steffl of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

 

>> Its amazing that we know so little about our own solar system, that new information keeps coming out on a constant basis. I don't see why we dont invest more time/money into looking out at the heavans. Most of the focus seems to be on whats going on down here then whats going on up there. Atlest were (very) slowly gaining more knowledge about space, hopefully in our lifetimes we will know more about our solar system...

 

 

[Guest c4evap]

Yeah I saw that...cool. Wasn't there a 10th. planet found in our solar system recently?

 

c4 :thinking:

[Bob43434]

Not really. There was a plantoid found past pluto. It was suppose to be bigger then pluto but it is considered as a keipur belt oblect by most Astronomers. Their is also talk about re-classifying Pluto as a keipur belt object instead of a planet. Due to it's size and relative poistion.

[GorunNova]

I seriously doubt that's going to happen... too many textbooks to replace, and too many attachments among laypeople.

[Bob43434]

Yeah, it is unlikely. the half of the scientific community wanting to do it has been since the 80's. But they haven;t got the support. Instead they make sure that nothing in the kuiper belt get classified as a planet.

[GorunNova]

Well... all I can say is that if they classify kuiper belt objects as planets, they'd better go and classify the MOON as a planet, too! It'd be nice to be on a binary planet pair instead of just a boring old planet with just one (rather big) moon.