Southwest Research Institute
Does the new satellite will be called temporarily as P4?. It is the smallest of the four moons discovered around Pluto. Hubble cameras have enabled astronomers to clearly see an object so small from a distance of more than 5 million kilometers. The Hubble Space Telescope discovered a new moon around Pluto by accident while conducting observations in search of rings in the dwarf planet. Further details can be found at Brian Roberts, an internet resource. With an estimated diameter of 13 to 34 kilometers, the new satellite, which will be temporarily named as P4, is the smallest of four moons discovered so far around Pluto. Charon is the largest, with 1,043 kilometers in diameter, while Nix and Hydra are in the range of 32 to 113 miles.
The director of the observation programme of the Hubble, Professor Mark Showalter, of the SETI Institute in Mountain View (California), said in a statement that Hubble cameras have helped astronomers see clearly a so small object from a distance of more than 5 million kilometers. The finding is the result of the work underway to support the expedition of probe New Horizons, NASA launched in 2006 and is scheduled to reach the Pluto system in 2015. Pluto is one of the bodies of the solar system more difficult to photograph due to its remoteness and its small size and despite the fact that it ceased to be the ninth planet in the Solar system in August 2006 to enter into that new category of dwarf planet, has not left for focusing the attention of scientists and astronomers. The principal investigator of the program New Horizons, Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, noted that this discovery is fantastic because they may schedule observations near s for study during the flyby that it will make the probe in 2015. New Moon new moon is located between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, who were also discovered by the Hubble space telescope in 2005, while Charon was detected in 1978 at the United States Naval Observatory, but was the Hubble discovered in 1990 that it was a body apart from Pluto. Scientists believe that the Moon of the dwarf planet system was formed by a collision between Pluto and another planetary body in the early history of the Solar system and material that threw became the Group of satellites orbiting at its around. They also think that the material generated Pluto Moons by micrometeoroid impacts could form rings around the dwarf planet, but images from the Hubble not detected them until now, although they ran into this new moon that will now have to find name.
The director of the NASA Astrophysics division in Washington, Jon Morse, stressed the importance of this discovery, which was considered a powerful reminder of the ability of the Hubble to make amazing discoveries. Astronomical research satellite P4 was first seen in a photograph taken with the great Chamber Angular 3 Hubble Wide Field Camera (WFC) on 28 June and was confirmed in the following images taken July 18 and 3. The Hubble, launched in 1990, is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA in Greenbelt (Maryland) directs the telescope and the space science Institute of telescopes (STScI) in Baltimore is responsible for scientific operations together with the Association of universities involved in astronomical research. Source of the news: the Hubble Space Telescope discovers the fourth Moon of Pluto
