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Hubble Images Show Pluto Moons All The Same Color
Baltimore MD (SPX) Mar 12, 2006 New Hubble Space Telescope observations reveal Pluto's three moons are nearly the same color, a finding that strongly suggests they all formed from a single collision event. A research team led by Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in College Park, Md., and Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., determined that Pluto's two newly discovered satellites - identified in May 2005 and provisionally named S/2005 P 1 and S/2005 P 2 - reflect the Sun's light in identical colors, as does Charon, the larger Plutonian moon discovered in 1978. In addition, as the team reported in International Astronomical Union Circular No. 8686, all three moons' surfaces reflect sunlight with equal efficiency at all wavelengths. In images, they all produce the same color as the Sun and Earth's moon, while Pluto has more of a reddish hue. The scientists obtained the new observations March 2 with the high-resolution channel of the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. They determined the bodies' colors by comparing the brightness of Pluto and each moon in images taken through a blue filter with those taken through a green/red filter. "The high quality of the new data leaves little doubt that the hemispheres of P1 and P2 that we observed have essentially identical, neutral colors," Weaver said in a statement. The new results strengthen the hypothesis that Pluto and its satellites formed after a collision between two Pluto-sized objects nearly 4.6 billion years ago. "Everything now makes even more sense," Stern said in the same statement. "If all three satellites presumably formed from the same material lofted into orbit around Pluto from a giant impact, you might well expect the surfaces of all three satellites to have similar colors." The team next will make Hubble color observations in several more filters to see if the similarity among the satellites persists to longer light wavelengths - in both read and near-infrared, where various ice and mineral absorptions can be detected. The new studies also should help to refine the orbits of P1 and P2 and measure the moons' shapes and rotational periods, Stern added. Related Links Hubble Space Telescope Space Telescope Science Institute Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Cometary Globule Image Marks A Thousand Pieces In NOAO Gallerie Collection
Tucson, Ariz. (SPX) March 9, 2006A dramatic new view of the cometary globule CG4 marks the one-thousandth image posted to the online gallery hosted by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. |
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