New moon found orbiting Pluto
Indo-Asian News Service
Washington, July 21, 2011
Washington, July 21, 2011
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It is the smallest moon discovered orbiting Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 13 to 34 km. By comparison, Charon - Pluto's largest moon - is 1,043 km across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 32 to 113 km in diameter.
"I find it remarkable that Hubble's cameras enabled us to see such a tiny object so clearly from a distance of more than three billion miles (or five billion km)," said Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in California, who led the programme.
P4 is located between the orbits of Nix and Hydra, which Hubble discovered in 2005.
Charon was discovered in 1978 at the US Naval Observatory and first resolved using Hubble in 1990 as a separate body from Pluto.
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