NASA : NASA’s New Horizons Spots Pluto’s Faintest Known Moons .- Satélite NASA’s New Horizons, enfocó las lunas o satélites que giran alrededor de Plutón

Hola amigos: A VUELO DE UN QUINDE EL BLOG., hemos recibido información de la Agencia Espacial NASA, sobre el satélite NASA’s New Horizons, que por primera vez captó fotografiando los satélites o lunas que giran alrededor de Plutón: Kerberos  y Styx que son las más débil y más pequeña de las cinco  conocidas de Plutón, Antes detectó el satélite o luna gigante Charon (Caronte) en julio del 2013 y las más pequeñas Hydra y Nix en julio del 2014 y enero del 2015 respectivamente. New Horizons está ahora a la vista de todos los miembros conocidos del sistema de Plutón.

More information........
http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-to-hold-media-call-to-discuss-surprising-observations-of-pluto-s-moons

It’s a complete Pluto family photo – or at least a photo of the family members we’ve already met.  

For the first time, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has photographed Kerberos and Styx – the smallest and faintest of Pluto’s five known moons. Following the spacecraft’s detection of Pluto’s giant moon Charon in July 2013, and Pluto’s smaller moons Hydra and Nix in July 2014 and January 2015, respectively, New Horizons is now within sight of all the known members of the Pluto system.

“New Horizons is now on the threshold of discovery,” said mission science team member John Spencer, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “If the spacecraft observes any additional moons as we get closer to Pluto, they will be worlds that no one has seen before.” 

Drawing ever closer to Pluto in mid-May, New Horizons will begin its first search for new moons or rings that might threaten the spacecraft on its passage through the Pluto system. The images of faint Styx and Kerberos shown here are allowing the search team to refine the techniques they will use to analyze those data, which will push the sensitivity limits even deeper.

Kerberos and Styx were discovered in 2011 and 2012, respectively, by New Horizons team members using the Hubble Space Telescope. Styx, circling Pluto every 20 days between the orbits of Charon and Nix, is likely just 4 to 13 miles (approximately 7 to 21 kilometers) in diameter, and Kerberos, orbiting between Nix and Hydra with a 32-day period, is just 6 to 20 miles (approximately 10 to 30 kilometers) in diameter. Each is 20 to 30 times fainter than Nix and Hydra. 

The images detecting Kerberos and Styx shown here were taken with New Horizons’ most sensitive camera, the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), from April 25-May 1. Each observation consists of five 10-second exposures that have been added together to make the image in the left panel. Images were extensively processed to reduce the bright glare of Pluto and Charon and largely remove the dense field of background stars (center and right panels). This reveals the faint satellites, whose positions and orbits - along with those of brighter moons Nix and Hydra -  are given in the right panel. 

“Detecting these tiny moons from a distance of more than 55 million miles is amazing, and a credit to the team that built our LORRI long-range camera and John Spencer’s team of moon and ring hunters,” added New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute.

Kerberos is visible in all of the images, though is partially obscured in the second image. Styx is not visible in the first image, only in subsequent ones; on April 25 it was obscured by electronic artifacts in the camera – the black and white streaks extending to the right of the extremely overexposed images of Pluto and Charon in the center of the frame. These artifacts point in different directions in different images due to the varying orientation of the spacecraft. Other unlabeled features in the processed images include the imperfectly removed images of background stars and other residual artifacts.

Although Styx and Kerberos are more visible in some frames than others, perhaps due to brightness fluctuations as they rotate on their axes, their identity is confirmed by their positions being exactly where they are predicted to be (in the center of the circles in the right panel).

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) designed, built, and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. SwRI leads the science team, payload operations and encounter science planning. New Horizons is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Last Updated: May 31, 2015

Editor: Tricia Talbert

Tags:  New Horizons, Pluto

 

NASA to Hold Media Call to Discuss Surprising Observations of Pluto’s Moons

NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, June 3, to discuss the Hubble Space Telescope’s surprising observations of how Pluto’s moons behave, and how these new discoveries are being used in the planning for the New Horizons Pluto flyby in July.
Participants in the teleconference will be:

• John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington
• Mark Showalter, senior research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California
• Douglas Hamilton, professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park
• John Spencer, scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado
• Heidi Hammel, executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Washington

To participate by phone, reporters must contact Felicia Chou at 202-358-0257 or
felicia.chou@nasa.gov
 and provide their media affiliation no later than 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:
http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio
For information about NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/hubble
For information about Pluto and NASA’s New Horizons mission, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/newhorizons
-end-

Felicia Chou
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0257
felicia.chou@nasa.gov
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
410-338-4514
villard@stsci.edu

Last Updated: May 31, 2015

Editor: Sarah Ramsey

Tags:  Hubble Space Telescope, New Horizons, Pluto

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