Good Night, Moon

Waning Gibbous

20.5 days old

67.3 percent lit

At 45 degree north parallel the moon rises as midnight and sets at 10:18 AM





4 June 2015
By Jonathan Amos

Hubble has revealed (click here) fascinating new details about Pluto's four smaller moons.

At a distance of five billion km, the telescope only sees the satellites as faint pinpricks of light, and yet it has been able to discern information on their size, colour, and rotational and orbital characteristics.

Hubble finds the little objects to be somewhat chaotic in their behaviour.
They are very likely wobbling end over end as they move through their orbits.
"If you can imagine what it would be like to live on [these moons], you would literally not know where the Sun was coming up tomorrow," said Mark Showalter from the Seti Institute, US.

"The Sun might rise in the west and set in the east. The Sun might rise in the west and set in the north for that matter. 

"In fact, if you had real estate on the north pole… you might discover one day you’re on the south pole."...

Additional Pictures (click here)

Image of Pluto taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. When it was discovered in 1930 by an astronomer from the United States, Pluto was known as the smallest planet in the solar system and the ninth planet from the sun. Nowadays, it is referred to as a "dwarf planet." Like other planets, so-called dwarf planets orbit the sun but they are so small they are not able to clear other objects out of their paths.

The newest discoveries about Pluto add to the existing evidence testifying to what would be a very inhospitable environment for visiting explorers. 

Credit: Hubble/NASA