Marc Buie11 June 2002
Hubble images of the Pluto system provide an earlier comparison epoch later used in searches for faint satellites.
United States · Science / Astronomy. Chronological records rendered directly from the World History Database.
Hubble images of the Pluto system provide an earlier comparison epoch later used in searches for faint satellites.
Hubble images reveal two faint candidate satellites near Pluto, later named Nix and Hydra.
A second Hubble observing epoch shows the two candidate moons moving with Pluto, strengthening the satellite interpretation.
NASA publicly announces Hubble's discovery of two possible additional moons orbiting Pluto.
The International Astronomical Union approves the names Nix and Hydra for Pluto's two small moons discovered with Hubble.
The names Kerberos and Styx are adopted for Pluto's fourth and fifth known moons, previously called P4 and P5.
New Horizons photographs Kerberos and Styx for the first time, bringing all five known Pluto moons into spacecraft view.
New Horizons observations reveal that Pluto's small moons are irregular bodies with unexpectedly complex rotational behaviour.
Analysis of the small moons shows rapid, non-synchronous rotation rather than the simple tidal locking seen in Pluto and Charon.
New Horizons detects Pluto's moon Nix during approach, adding another small satellite to its own imaging record.
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