New Portrait Made of Pluto and its Moons

ToSeek · #1 (**permalink**) 13-October-2007, 04:16 AM

Quote:

New images of Pluto and its moons are among the sharpest ever made, astronomers announced today.

Pluto, long called a planet, was downgraded last year to "dwarf planet" status by the International Astronomical Union. It is so far away that no clear pictures of it exist.

The new images are 20 times brighter than those taken of Pluto 30 years ago when its large moon Charon was discovered. The resulting snapshots are expected to bring astronomers closer to estimating the sizes of Pluto's satellites, Nix, Hydra and Charon.

"Several favorable factors occurred simultaneously to yield these spectacular images of the Pluto system," said astronomer David Tholen, who performed the observations during an early September evening with one of Mauna Kea's twin Keck telescopes.

Tholen relied on the adaptive optics system of Keck, which compensates for turbulence from Earth's atmosphere that typically blurs the light from celestial bodies. In addition, Pluto was at its maximum brightness that night, giving the adaptive optics "stellar" conditions.

He took 16 images of the system and combined them into a single picture, resulting in clear views of Nix and Hydra, Pluto's small satellites that were discovered in 2005 with the Hubble Space Telescope.

antoniseb · #2 (**permalink**) 14-October-2007, 12:51 PM

Nice image. Thanks.

Saluki · #3 (**permalink**) 18-October-2007, 05:07 PM

Nice pics of the system, but how are they considered "better" that this baby assembled from Hubble observations?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0103/pluto_sri.jpg

NEOWatcher · #4 (**permalink**) 18-October-2007, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saluki

Nice pics of the system, but how are they considered "better" that this baby assembled from Hubble observations?

You just said it. It's the best "single" picture of them to date. Yours is a composite.

Anyway, do I dare mention the use of the word "moon" with a non-planet?

ngc3314 · #5 (**permalink**) 18-October-2007, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NEOWatcher

Anyway, do I dare mention the use of the word "moon" with a non-planet?

What else would one call Charon, Styx, Hydra, Dysnomia, Dactyl, and the unnamed companions of assorted asteroids and trans-Neptune objects (oops, IAU member, better make that "small solar-system bodies in orbits mostly between Mars and Jupiter or beyond Neptune, respectively)?

Hydro · #6 (**permalink**) 18-October-2007, 08:16 PM

That is amazing. I really looking forward to the next eight years!

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