Yet another Moon!

Today's lesson of the day is a no-brainer! Pluto's fourth moon is discovered!

Pluto is becoming more and more interesting! It was only in 1930 that Pluto itself was discovered! I let you entertain yourself to the story of what led to that discovery! The first and biggest moon of Pluto, Charon, was discovered in 1978 by astronomer James Christy.

For decades we grew up thinking of Pluto as a planet in our solar system, a planet with a big moon, just like our home planet! Until 2005, when two new moons of Pluto, Nix and Hydra, were discovered, and later verified with 2006 HST observations. This discovery made Pluto lose its planet status and be classified as a dwarf planet! I let you hear about this discovery's story from the person who made it, Max Mutchler!

Just as textbooks were changed and teachers and the general public were adjusting to Pluto not being a planet and having three moons, here comes today's discovery! Ironically during a time when many eyes are on Vesta and working hard to find a moon of it! Pluto comes and steals the show :-) New Horizon mission will have a lot to visit and learn about during its Pluto fly-by in 2015!

Now I wonder if this 4th moon appeared in 2005/2006 HST Pluto images and was undetected/missed or that it was somewhere else in its orbit and not in those frames. If it was missed before, we, especially the Dawn team, have to learn how and why it happened before it is too late.

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p.s. Can you imagine how exciting 2015 will be? We see Pluto and its moons from New Horizon's eyes, and we see Ceres and all it has to offer via Dawn mission! We are going to see so many new worlds for the first time, and soon later in 2016 Juno reveals Jupiter to us!