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New "moons" for Pluto? Early news (first picture at LR)
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Two small moons have been discovered orbiting Pluto, bringing the Planet's retinue of known satellites to 3 and leaving scientist to wonder how it could be.
The newfound moons orbit about 27.000 miles (44.000 Km) from Pluto, more than twice as far as Charon, Pluto's other satellite, and they are 5000 times dimmer than Charon.
Preliminary observations suggest they are in circular orbits around Pluto and in the same plane as Charon, said Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
"That suggests they probably formed at the same time as Charon" Weaver told SPACE.com in a telephone interview. NASA planned a teleconference with reporters to announce the discovery.
While scientists had predicted there might be more moons, the newfound setup is surprising nonetheless, in part because Pluto is smaller than our own Moon.
"It's almost like a mini Solar System" Weaver said.
How can something about 70% the size of Earth's Moon have all these satellites? How can that happen?".
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