Moon Crater Names

Pass Out the Cigars! Pluto is a Papa

With all the attention places like Jupiter and Mars were done as NASA prepares to send two new probes their way, it is easy to forget that a spaceship is still going to the edge the solar system at speeds greater than 50,000 mph (80,000 kph), the right to Pluto. Even at this breakneck speed, the New Horizons probe, launched in 2006, before Pluto was demoted from a planet fully certified to a dwarf planet, will not arrive until 2015.

But mission scientists don't want to waste a moment when it finally gets there, so they've been scouting ahead with the Hubble Space Telescope to see if there's anything unusual to photograph or any hazards to avoid — rings, for example, which could damage or even destroy a space probe that smashed through them at high speed.

The image that popped up in Hubble's gallery on June 28 didn't show any rings — but it did show that Pluto has a moon nobody knew about. Temporarily known as P4 until it's granted a real name, it joins Charon, discovered by a U.S. Naval Observatory telescope in 1978; and Nix and Hydra, spotted by Hubble, in 2005. There's a good reason P4 escaped notice until now: its diameter, somewhere between 8 and 21 mi. (13 and 33 km), makes it all but impossible to see from Earth. "We always knew it was possible there were more moons out there," says Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission and a co-discoverer of the new moon, "and lo and behold, there it was."

It almost wasn't, as far as the astronomers were concerned.Stern, planetary scientist with Mark Showalter of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., made a proposal a year ago asking for some valuable time of Hubble to search for rings around Pluto. "You have to have rings, at least from time to time," said Stern. The reason: Nix and Hydra, like almost all other objects in the Solar System, is bombarded by meteorites or pieces of the comet every so often ". I guarantee that when we get there," said Stern, "we'll see craters." These impacts flow of ice particles into space and those will be paricles ring. "The only question," says Stern, "is how long they last." The Hubble folks, though, turned the scientists down. So they appealed, and the second time around their project was approved.

Showalter and Stern are not done yet. Along with several colleagues, they have submitted a second proposal before the Hubble time-allocation committee, which fields hundreds of such pitches per year. Scientists whose requests are granted don't always have as much time as they'd like with the Hubble, but Showalter and Stern will take what they can get, since they wouldn't be at all surprised if there are still more Plutonian satellites to be found. That's because the four known moons were likely born when something huge smacked into Pluto ages ago. If that collision produced big debris chunks, it surely produced smaller, still-undetected ones too.

Golden Gang: Arco, ID & Craters of the Moon National Park

&Nbsp; When we were at that distance, the small town, our plan was to visit the local National Park. We did not know it was also the weekend is celebrated as "Atomic Days" Every year they have a plane fly over the area of ​​the city center, and during his show, the plane fell thousands of ping-pong balls from heaven! Some of these balls have a star on them. If you get one with a star, you get a piece of 50 percent compared to the local sheriff:) Zach and Hannah one! Too cool ! If you're wondering what we are standing on the step and thus it is effectively cooled molten lava! Yep.  This area has a volcano that is recorded to have an eruption about every 2000 years.  It is actually 'past' due for its next one, though.  :)  The park is SO clean and organized.  They even paint the sidewalks black to match the 'atmosphere.

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