Pluto, the enigmatic little Kuiper Belt object (or planet, if you prefer) which wanders in the far reaches of our solar system, has long captured my imagination.  As an 11 year old boy, I was thrilled with the news that a moon of Pluto, "Charon" had been discovered.  I liked the idea that Pluto had an inordinately large (by comparison) companion, that it didn't have to wander the cold frontier alone.  Then earlier this month, I got to relive that thrill...

In May of 2005 a team of scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered two additional satellites orbiting Pluto.  Temporarily dubbed S/2005P1 and S/2005P2, these tiny moons orbit Pluto at a distance of about 27,000 miles (orbital diagram) and have estimated diameters between 40 and 125 miles.

The alleged moons were observed on May 15 and again on May 18 of this year.  Then previous Hubble images of Pluto taken in 2002 were studied and the moons were found there close to their predicted positions.  A final followup observation will be made in February of 2006 to confirm that these objects are real and are definitely in orbit around Pluto.

The scientists that made the discovery were:

How wonderful!  More objects for the New Horizons probe to Pluto to study!

New Horizons is scheduled to launch in January or February of 2006, right around the 100'th anniversay of Clyde Tombaugh's birth.  It should arrive at the Pluto/Charon system in July of 2015.  If I'm still around, I'll be 48 years old.  I wonder what our world will be like then?