Pluto and Its Moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra

A pair of small moons that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope discovered orbiting Pluto now have official names: Nix and Hydra. Photographed by Hubble in 2005, Nix and Hydra are roughly 5,000 times fainter than Pluto and are about two to three times farther from Pluto than its large moon, Charon, which was discovered in 1978.

About the colours

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.

About the data

These HST data are from proposal 10774 : H.A. Weaver (JHU/APL), S.A. Stern and J.R. Spencer (SwRI), M.W. Buie (Lowell Obs.), E. Young, L.A. Young, and A.J. Steffl (SwRI), M. Mutchler (STScI) and W.J. Merline (SwRI).