Pluto's 3 Moons and a Probe to Study Them

It doesn't come easy writes "For those of you keeping score, Pluto now officially has three moons, with more possibly to follow. The newfound moons orbit about 27,000 miles (44,000 kilometers) from Pluto, more than twice as far as Charon, Pluto's other satellite. They are 5,000 times dimmer than Charon. The moons were found using the Hubble Space Telescope. For now, Pluto is the only Kuiper Belt object known to have satellites. Some nice images of Pluto and its moons are included in links. Enjoy!" Relatedly IZ Reloaded writes "NASA says the Atlas 5 rocket that will carry the New Horizons Pluto probe has suffered slight damage thanks to Hurricane Wilma. New Scientist reports: "The Atlas 5 rocket stands within a construction hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Florida's east coast. As Wilma rolled though the region on 24 October, fierce 122-kilometer-per-hour winds tore holes in the hangar's 83-meter-tall door and caused minor damage to the rocket inside.""

Comments

Classification

[Da3vid]

Is it really a big deal when we name something a moon? Its just a matter of relativity. A planet, a moon, an asteroid, a rock... they're all the same thing, that varies by degrees. I suppose the things orbital path is of interest, but how much can we really learn just by applying labels? We didn't learn anything about the true scientific nature of those bodies, we just named them. I think I'll name them Susanna, Melinda and Jim.

-Da3vid-

Re:Nice?

[l2718]

A bunch of small white dots is very good, actually. The fact that both Pluto and Charon come out as extended objects in the short exposure picture is quite impressive in its own right. I wonder if the long exposure has better resolution or is smeared due to an imprefect correction for the relative motion of the telescope and Pluto. Any astronomers reading this?

Re:No other Kuiper Belt Objects have moons?!?

[Rei]

It was more than subtext. How about the episode where Gabrielle, at the end after much buildup, comes out as a "thespian"? Or how about the episode in which Xena has her mind in Bruce Campbell's body, and sleeps with Gabrielle? Or how about the episode where the reality show follows them around discusses the nature of their relationship? It was a running joke that they were lesbians, and there was no attempt to hide it - they played it up every chance they got (one character trapped underwater, another has to dive down and kiss to give air, etc). Check out this search. There was an interview that I ran into a while ago in which one of the creators explicitly stated (to paraphrase) "We've always tried to keep it vague... but yeah, they're lesbians.", but in my attempt to search for it, I ran into some pictures that I distinctly did not want to come across while at a work PC, and terminated my search promptly (you can look for it yourself).