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2 more moons for Pluto
 Pluto, the most distant recognised planet of the Solar System, has two tiny satellites in addition to Charon, the moon which was discovered in 1978. US astronomers used the orbiting Hubble telescope to spot the moonlets, which have been labelled S/2005 P1 and and S/2005 P2 until formal names are approved after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) vets the find. P1 and P2 appear to measure between 48 kilometers and 165 kms across and take 38 and 25 days respectively to orbit Pluto, according to their paper, published on Thursday in Nature, the weekly British science journal. Pluto, discovered in 1930 by the American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, is the outermost of the acknowledged planets, although a new contender for that title emerged last year in the form of an object called 2003 UB313.
Posted by: Fred 2006-02-23 |
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