History
The innermost moon, Charon, was discovered by James Christy on June 22, 1978, nearly half a century after Pluto. Two outer moons were imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope Pluto Companion Search Team in May 2005, and precovered from Hubble images taken in June 2002. With the orbits confirmed, the moons have been given definitive names: Hydra (Pluto III, formerly S/2005 P 1) and Nix (Pluto II, formerly S/2005 P 2). The names were chosen in part because the initials (NH) allude to the New Horizons mission. Further Hubble observations were made in February and March 2006. The possibility of rings created by impacts on the smaller moons will be investigated by the New Horizons probe. The fourth moon was announced in July 2011, and the fifth in July 2012.
Read more about this topic: Moons Of Pluto
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“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
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—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)