Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Nix and Hydra

Two additional moons of Pluto (in addition to Charon) were imaged by astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope on 5/15/2005. The International Astronomical Union officially named the moons Nix and Hydra. These moons orbit Pluto at approximately two and three times the distance of Charon: Nix at 48,700 kilometres and Hydra at 64,800 kilometres from the barycenter of the system.

No comments: