Pluto’s New Moons Named

Pluto is the well known 9th planets in the solar system. According to the latest discovery, it has 3 moons now.

Now, the 2 latest discovered moons by Hubble Space Telescope on May 2005 have been named as Nix and Hydra. Before, they were originally called S/2005 P1 and S/2005 P2.

Left: The 2 small dots on the picture are Nix and Hydra.

By the way, IAU plans to publish an official defination of “planet” in early September, ruling on whether to call Pluto a planet or a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO). Pluto’s status as a planet has been fragile since the discoveries of KBOs Quaoar, Sedna, and 2003UB313 (informally named “Xena”), which is slightly larger than Pluto. The IAU will discuss the issue at its August meeting in Prague.