New Horizon (Photo : Reuters/NASA handouts)
New Horizons' long range reconnaissance imager camera has captured a series of images featuring Pluto and its moons Styx and Kerberos. While New Horizons is moving forward towards Pluto approximately reaching its destination on July 14, the probe has already proven its worth in providing images of the rather faint planet and its moons.
Alan Stern, principal investigator from Southwest Research Institute in Colorado said in a statement through NASA, "Detecting these tiny moons from a distance of more than 55 million miles [88.5 million kilometers] is amazing, and a credit to the team that built our LORRI long-range camera and [mission team member] John Spencer's team of moon and ring hunters."
Pluto has five satellites namely, Styx, Kerboros, Nix, Hydra, and Charon. Charon with a diameter of 648 miles, is half as big as Pluto; however, the four other moons are small. Styx and the Kerberos, for instance, are about seven to 20 miles in width.
In the image, the smaller moons are individually visible, while Charon has melded with Pluto in a brighter blur. All scientists who are working to fulfill the Pluto mission processed the series of images extensively in order to lessen the Charon-Pluto glare and show the tiny moons, clearly, Science Times reported.
Spencer, who is also from Colorado's Southwest Research Institute, said "If the New Horizons observes any more additional tiny moons as it gets closer to its mission planet Pluto, they will be worlds that no one has seen before."
The $700 million mission was originally launched in 2006 to perform the first ever reconnaissance of Pluto and its tiny moons.
