Hubble and Another Moon!

Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California has discovered 14th known moon of planet Neptune using Hubble Space Telescope's data of Neptune obtained in 2009!  This moon is 12 miles in diameter, the smallest and the faintest of the Neptune moons.  It is so faint that even escaped detection by Voyager 2 Spacecraft in 1989 that flew by Neptune to survey this planet.  Showalter detected this moon on July 1, when it was 65400 miles away from Neptune!  This moon is currently referred to as S/2004 N 1, and orbits the planet, based on Showalter calculations, once every 23 hours!

Yet another reminder that we are just beginning to know our own backyard, the solar system, and that Hubble remains one of the major innovations of the last century with high, if not the highest scientific impact, among other innovations.  To learn about Hubble discoveries to date, please visit here. 

"This composite Hubble Space Telescope picture shows the location of a newly discovered moon, designated S/2004 N 1, orbiting Neptune. The black and white image was taken in 2009 with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 in visible light. Hubble took the color inset of Neptune on August 2009. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Showalter/SETI Institute"

To learn more about newly discovered Moon of Neptune, please visit here.

Reference:

[1] http://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-hubble-finds-new-neptune-moon/#.UelHpRaUdjC
[2] http://hubblesite.org/hubble_discoveries/

1998 QE2

During the past weeks we have heard about asteroid 1998 QE2 and how it has got closer than any other asteroid to Earth.  Whether or not it poses any dangers to us or not (well, it does not). In fact, the closest approach of this asteroid to Earth occurs tomorrow, May 31, 4:59 pm Eastern Time, "when the asteroid will get no closer than about 3.6 million miles (5.8 million kilometers), or about 15 times the distance between Earth and the moon". As eyes were on this asteroid to capture this approach, NASA scientists discovered that QE2 has its own moon!   Radar data of NASA's Goldstone Deep Space antenna in California were used for this finding.  Images were taken from "3.75 million miles (6 million kilometers) from Earth, which is 15.6 lunar distances." To learn more read here.

Yet, I wonder, where is my moon?  I mean Vesta's moon?

Reference:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/asteroids/news/asteroid20130530.html

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!