Hubble image archive
Artist's Illustration of Pluto's Satellites
This artist's illustration shows the scale and comparative brightness of Pluto's small satellites, as discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope over the past several years. Pluto's binary companion, Charon (discovered in 1978), is placed at the bottom for scale. Two of the moons a...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2015
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2015-24-3595-image
This artist's illustration shows the scale and comparative brightness of Pluto's small satellites, as discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope over the past several years. Pluto's binary companion, Charon (discovered in 1978), is placed at the bottom for scale. Two of the moons are highly oblate. The reflectivity among the moons varies from dark charcoal to the brightness of white sand. Hubble cannot resolve surface features on the moons and so the cratered textures seen here are purely for illustration purposes.
Credits
NASA, ESA, M. Showalter (SETI Institute), and A. Feild (STScI)Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, Styx, Charon |
| Object Description | Minor Moons of the Pluto-Charon System |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | Data of the minor moons of Pluto were obtained from various HST proposals, including : M. Showalter (SETI Institute) and D. Hamilton (University of Maryland, College Park), who also comprise the science team for this release. Object Name: Styx Discovery Year: 2012 Semi-major axis (in km): 42,700 Period (in days): 20.2 Object Name: Nix Discovery Year: 2005 Semi-major axis (in km): 48,700 Period (in days): 24.9 Object Name: Kerberos Discovery Year: 2011 Semi-major axis (in km): 57,800 Period (in days): 32.2 Object Name: Hydra Discovery Year: 2005 Semi-major axis (in km): 64,800 Period (in days): 38.2 |
| Instrument | WFC3/UVIS |
| Exposure Dates | April 27, 2013 |
| Filters | F606W (V) |
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Source
Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
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