[meteorite-list] Hubble Space Telescope discovers 4th moon around Pluto

From: Marc Fries <mfries8_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:39:47 -0700
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP987F4131FF40278BA405CDF14C0_at_phx.gbl>

That's just weird. Pluto is sounding more like a cloud of fragments than
anything else. I wonder how long its been like that.

Cheers,
Marc Fries

On 7/20/11 11:35 AM, Matson, Robert D. wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Pluto has a 4th moon! Here's a link to the CBAT:
>
> http://www.cbat.eps.harvard.edu/cbet/cbet002769.txt
>
> Below is the NASA News release:
>
> July 20, 2011
>
> Trent J. Perrotto
> Headquarters, Washington
> trent.j.perrotto at nasa.gov
> 202-358-0321
>
> Ray Villard
> Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore
> villard at stsci.edu
> 410-338-4514
>
> Karen Randall
> SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.
> krandall at seti.org
> 650-960-4537
>
>
> RELEASE: 11-234
>
> NASA'S HUBBLE DISCOVERS ANOTHER MOON AROUND PLUTO
>
> WASHINGTON -- Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered
> a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new
> satellite, temporarily designated P4, was uncovered in a Hubble
> survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet.
>
> The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an
> estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison,
> Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the
> other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in
> diameter (32 to 113 km).
>
> "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 of the SETI Institute in
> Mountain View, Calif., who led this observing program with Hubble.
>
> The finding is a result of ongoing work to support NASA's New Horizons
> mission, scheduled to fly through the Pluto system in 2015. The
> mission is designed to provide new insights about worlds at the edge
> of our solar system. Hubble's mapping of Pluto's surface and
> discovery of its satellites have been invaluable to planning for New
> Horizons' close encounter.
>
> "This is a fantastic discovery," said New Horizons' principal
> investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in
> Boulder, Colo. "Now that we know there's another moon in the Pluto
> system, we can plan close-up observations of it during our flyby."
>
> The new moon is located between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, which
> Hubble discovered in 2005. Charon was discovered in 1978 at the U.S.
> Naval Observatory and first resolved using Hubble in 1990 as a
> separate body from Pluto.
>
> The dwarf planet's entire moon system is believed to have formed by a
> collision between Pluto and another planet-sized body early in the
> history of the solar system. The smashup flung material that
> coalesced into the family of satellites observed around Pluto.
>
> Lunar rocks returned to Earth from the Apollo missions led to the
> theory that our moon was the result of a similar collision between
> Earth and a Mars-sized body 4.4 billion years ago. Scientists believe
> material blasted off Pluto's moons by micrometeoroid impacts may form
> rings around the dwarf planet, but the Hubble photographs have not
> detected any so far.
>
> "This surprising observation is a powerful reminder of Hubble's
> ability as a general purpose astronomical observatory to make
> astounding, unintended discoveries," said Jon Morse, astrophysics
> division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
>
> P4 was first seen in a photo taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3
> on June 28. It was confirmed in subsequent Hubble pictures taken on
> July 3 and July 18. The moon was not seen in earlier Hubble images
> because the exposure times were shorter. There is a chance it
> appeared as a very faint smudge in 2006 images, but was overlooked
> because it was obscured.
>
> Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the
> European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
> Greenbelt, Md., manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science
> Institute (STScI) in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations.
> STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for
> Research in Astronomy Inc. in Washington.
>
> For images and more information about Hubble, visit:
>
> http://www.nasa.gov/hubble
>
> and
>
> http://hubblesite.org/news/2011/23
>
> -end-
>
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Received on Wed 20 Jul 2011 02:39:47 PM PDT