Friday 13 July 2012

Pluto's Fifth Moon discovered


The NASA’s New Horizons Hubble team has recently discovered the fifth moon to the former planet Pluto. This moon has been currently known only by its provisional name ‘P5’. As per the Hubble Telescope team from NASA, the new moon of Pluto is six to 15 miles wide and travels in a 58,000-mile-diameter circular orbit around Pluto. P5 has been clearly seen as a separate moon that steers the dwarf planet apart from the four other satellites. The NASA’s team discovered P5 when they were scoping out the space around Pluto for potential debris or dust that could damage their New Horizons spacecraft for the Bastille Day flyby of July 14, 2015. The New Horizons craft travels at 30,000 mph and could be damaged by anything that gets in its path. P5 was detected in 14 separate sets of images taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on June 26, 27 and 29 in addition to on July 7 and 9. The first moon to Pluto had been discovered in 1978 and named as ‘Charon’, followed by the second and third moon in 2005, which were named as Nix and Hydra. The Fourth moon of Pluto, titled P4, was discovered near Pluto last year. Pluto's moons are traditionally named after Greek mythological characters. The Hubble team has further expected that - The discovery of so many small moons indirectly tells us that there must be lots of small particles lurking unseen in the Pluto system.

No comments:

Post a Comment