The images transmitted to Earth automatic interplanetary station New Horizons, the first sealed Kerber and Styx – the two smallest of the five known satellites of Pluto.
The machine New Horizons was launched the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in January 2006. The station is designed to study the dwarf planet Pluto and its moons, which are still scarcely explored due to the large distance from the Earth and a small mass on space standards.
The system includes five satellites of Pluto known objects. The largest of these is Charon, discovered in 1978: a diameter of the moon, according to current estimates, is 1205 km – slightly more than half the diameter of Pluto. In 2005, using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered two more satellites – Hydra and Nix diameter of several tens of kilometers. In 2011, scientists learned more about a satellite of Pluto, he was named Cerberus. A year later opened the fifth moon – Styx.
The published satellite images Kerber and Styx obtained during the period from April 25 to May 1 with a tool LORRI (Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager). This device is a camera with a resolution of 5 microradians designed for detailed shooting and shooting from a distance.
It is estimated that Kerber spans from 10 to 30 km, while the Styx has a diameter of 7 up to 20 km. So now at the disposal of scientists there are pictures of all five satellites of Pluto.
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