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The International Astronomical Union officially named these moons Nix (Pluto II, the inner of the two moons, formerly P 2) and Hydra (Pluto III, the outer moon, formerly P 1), on 21 June 2006. [4] Kerberos, announced on 20 July 2011, was discovered while searching for Plutonian rings.
Nix is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of 49.8 km (30.9 mi) across its longest dimension. [3] It was discovered along with Pluto's outermost moon Hydra on 15 May 2005 by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, [1] and was named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. [10]
All of Pluto's moons including Kerberos have very circular orbits with very low orbital inclinations to Pluto's equator. Kerberos orbits between Nix and Hydra and makes a complete orbit around Pluto roughly every 32.167 days. [1] [16] Its orbital period is close to a 1:5 orbital resonance with Charon, [21] with the timing discrepancy being ...
It is about half the diameter and an eighth the mass of Pluto, a dwarf planet that resides in a frigid region of the outer Solar System called the Kuiper Belt, beyond the most distant planet Neptune.
Charon (moon) (1 C, 3 P) Pages in category "Moons of Pluto" The following 6 pages are in this category, out of 6 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. ...
NASA launched the New Horizon spacecraft in 2006 to learn more about the icy dwarf planet Pluto. Here are some of the first photos from that mission, taken from between 125 and 115 million miles away.
Pluto's smaller moons, including Hydra, were thought to have formed from debris ejected from a massive collision between Pluto and another Kuiper belt object, similarly to how the Moon is believed to have formed from debris ejected by a large collision of Earth. [25] The ejecta from the collision would then coalesce into the moons of Pluto. [26]
NASA's New Horizons probe has returned the first color images of Pluto. The small blurry dots in the newly-released photo are Pluto and Charon, the largest of Pluto's moons. New Horizons captured ...