Pluto has another moon!

Pluto may no longer be a planet, but Bad Astronomy reports Pluto has another moon! "It doesn’t have a name yet — it’s designated S/2011 P1 (or just P4 informally) — and it’s only about 13 – 34 km (8 to 21 miles) across. The size is estimated by measuring its brightness and assuming it’s icy like Pluto itself — a more reflective (white or icy) object would appear brighter than a darker object if they are the same size. Since its actual reflectivity isn’t known, the size has a wide range. But it’s still pretty dinky. For comparison, Pluto itself is 2300 km across, and its biggest moon Charon is well over 1000 km in size. I’ll note our own Moon is 3470 km across, so even Pluto is pretty small."

I remembered Charon but didn't realize that dwarf planet Pluto had two other moons. They were discovered in 2005 (so I probably blogged them).



"Mind you, Pluto was 5 billion km (3 billion miles) from Earth when this image was taken! But we’ll soon get much better pictures: the New Horizons probe will fly past the tiny world in 2015, snapping away as it does. We’ll probably learn more about Pluto in a few hours than we have since its discovery in 1930."