PLUTO Has A FIFTH MOON, Still No Goddamn Respect.

Pluto. It can’t catch a  break. Despite having like, a zillion moons (four) with like a million more found (a fifth), it still isn’t a pluto. What the hell is up with that.

Bad Astronomy:

You can see it in that image (click to enhadesenate) in the green circle. Pluto was targeted by HST for several observations in late June and early July, and P5 – also called S/2012 (134340), the moon’s designation until it gets a proper name – was seen moving around the tiny world. This image is from July 7.

As moons go, it isn’t much: it’s probably only about 10 – 25 kilometers (6 – 15 miles) across, making it one of the smallest moons detected in the entire solar system. That’s actually pretty amazing, given Pluto was 4.7 billion km away (2.8 billion miles) when these images were taken!

Pluto was observed in part to look for more moons. In 2015, the New Horizons probe will zip past Pluto, and scientists want to know as much about the system as they can before it gets there. The odds are low of them hitting any of those moons – space is big, and the moons and spacecraft are small – but a) better safe than sorry, and 2) if there are more targets to observe we want to know now so they can be added to the itinerary!

Observations like this are good for discovering moons and getting their locations, but size is a different matter. Literally. We know how far away the moon is, and how bright, but it’s far too small to directly get the size. Its diameter has to be estimated by assuming how reflective the surface is. If it’s dark like coal, it has to be bigger to be so bright, and if it’s shiny like ice, it’s smaller. That’s why we don’t know P5′s size to even within a factor of 2! But once New Horizons zips past, it may be able to nail down the size far better.

Stay strong, Pluto. Stay strong.