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News Release Archive:

News Release 36 of 884

July 11, 2012 11:30 AM (EDT)

News Release Number: STScI-2012-32

Hubble Discovers a Fifth Moon Orbiting Pluto

Technical facts about this news release:

About the Object

Object Name:	P5, S/2012 (134340) 1
Object Description:	Fifth Discovered Moon of Pluto
Distance:	Although its orbit is highly eccentric, Pluto's average distance from the Sun is 39.44 astronomical units (roughly 3.6 billion miles or 5.9 billion kilometers). P5's distance from Pluto is 26,000 miles or 42,000 kilometers.
Dimensions:	Pluto has a diameter of roughly 1,416 miles (2,280 kilometers) at the equator.

About the Data

Data Description:	This image was created from HST data from proposal 12801: H. Weaver (APL/JHU), M. Showalter (SETI Institute), S.A. Stern, M. Buie, W. Merline, and A. Steffl (Southwest Research Institute), H. Throop (Planetary Science Institute), and R. Soummer and M. Mutchler (STScI)
Instrument:	WFC3/UVIS
Exposure Date(s):	June 26, 27, 29, 2012 and July 7 and 9, 2012
Filters:	F350LP (Long Pass)

About the Release

Credit:	NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
Release Date:	July 11, 2012
Color:	This image was originally black and white and recorded only overall brightness. These brightness values were translated into a range of bluish hues. Such color "maps" can be useful in helping to distinguish subtly-varying brightness in an image. The colors in this image are not what human eyes would see looking at Pluto.
Orientation/Scale: