Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope , a team of astronomers has found a new moon around the dwarf planet Pluto. This fifth satellite appears to have an irregular shape, measuring 10 to 24 kilometers in diameter and drawing a circular orbit around the planet in the same plane as the rest of the moons. In fact, the satellites of Pluto "form a series of ringed orbits, like Russian dolls ," explains Mark Showalter, a researcher at the SETI Institute and responsible for the study.
The high number of satellites surrounding Pluto surprises astronomers. Pluto's largest moon, Charon, was discovered in 1978. In 2006 Hublle identified two more, Nix and Hydra; and in 2011 the space telescope observed the fourth satellite, named P4, to which P5 has just been added. Everything indicates that the numerous satellites are relics of a collision between Pluto and another large object in the Kuiper belt that could have taken place billions of years ago.
The researchers are not ruling out finding new celestial bodies at the edges of the solar system when they launch the infrared vision of Hubble's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which among other things will measure the surface chemistry of Pluto and its moons.
