New Moons Orbiting Pluto
Pluto now has four known moons. Charon was discovered in 1978, and is the largest of Pluto’s moons. It is 648 miles across, causing many people to consider it and Pluto a “double dwarf planet”. Nothing new was learned of icy bodies orbiting Pluto until 2005, when the Hubble Space Telescope discovered Nix and Hydra. They are both in the range of 20 – 70 miles in diameter. The most amazing discovery regarding Pluto’s moons came in 2011, when Hubble photographed what is temporarily being called P4. It is in the range of 8 – 21 miles in diameter. It is an amazing feat, for Hubble to photograph something that tiny, that is over 3 billion miles away from us.
Pluto now has four known moons. Charon was discovered in 1978, and is the largest of Pluto’s moons. It is 648 miles across, causing many people to consider it and Pluto a “double dwarf planet”. Nothing new was learned of icy bodies orbiting Pluto until 2005, when the Hubble Space Telescope discovered Nix and Hydra. They are both in the range of 20 – 70 miles in diameter. The most amazing discovery regarding Pluto’s moons came in 2011, when Hubble photographed what is temporarily being called P4. It is in the range of 8 – 21 miles in diameter. It is an amazing feat, for Hubble to photograph something that tiny, that is over 3 billion miles away from us.
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