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Explanation: Nix and Hydra were first introduced to human eyes in Hubble Space Telescope images from May 2005, as Pluto's second and third known moons. Now Hubble images have revealed a fourth satellite for the icy, dwarf planet. Provisionally designated P4, it completes an orbit of Pluto in about 31 days. Presently Pluto's smallest and dimmest known moon, P4 is estimated to be 13 to 34 kilometers across. The newly discovered satellite was first spotted in Hubble observations from June 28, and later confirmed in a follow-up on July 3 and July 18. These two panels are composites of both...

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite – temporarily designated P4 -- popped up in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet. The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km). "I find it remarkable...

Richard Branson has bought Pluto and intends to have it reinstated as a planet. Sir Richard Branson is setting his sights on the final frontier in his latest business venture announced today.

Okay, you FR sky watchers, what is the very bright planet I see each morning as I make my way into the city of Chicago? It is in the SE sky. Just asking and yes, I've checked Uranus...

Astronomer Brian G. Marsden, a comet and asteroid tracker who stood sentinel to protect the Earth from collisions with interplanetary rocks and other remnants of the solar system's creation, died Thursday of cancer at Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington, Mass. He was 73. Director emeritus of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., Marsden was perhaps best known for his 1998 announcement that an asteroid known as 1997 XF11 might strike the Earth in 2028, causing untold damage. The announcement sparked additional studies which quickly showed that such an impact was unlikely. Marsden,...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Pluto, the dwarf planet on the outer edge of our solar system, has a dramatically ruddier hue than it did just a few years ago, NASA scientists said Thursday, after examining photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. They said the distant orb appears mottled and molasses-colored in recent pictures, with a markedly redder tone that most likely is the result of surface ice melting on Pluto's sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole. The remarkable color shift, which apparently took place between 2000 and 2002, confirms that Pluto is a dynamic world undergoing dramatic...

According to a strict interpretation of the IAU definition of a planet we're stuck with eight major planets in the entire galaxy. No, wait, the entire freaking universe! No more, no less. Not ever, not never. Why? Because the IAU definition ignores the over 400 planets to date that have been found orbiting other stars. This month alone 25 new exoplanets were announced at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington D.C. The dirty little secret is that the Pluto-antagonists needed the vote of the exoplanet research community to pass their Pluto-is-not-a-planet resolution. Therefore they steered clear of...

...the iconic orbiting observatory is working just fine after its May upgrade which saw it get new batteries, gyroscopes and and a thorough overhaul of its instruments. It also got a new camera and a new spectrograph from the astronauts who spent five days under Hubble's hood. The upgrade, almost certain to be Hubble's last, should keep it producing tip-top images until 2014... Ed Weiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said that the telescope is "significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade." According to NASA, future observations will range from "studying the population...

Three years ago, the IAU decided to draw up the first scientific definition of the term planet. After days of stormy arguments at its general assembly in Prague, the delegates voted for a definition that excluded Pluto, downgrading it to the new category of dwarf planet. The decision caused outrage among many members of the public who had grown up with nine planets, and among some astronomers who pointed out that only 4 per cent of the IAU's 10,000 members took part in the vote. The governors of Illinois saw the decision as a snub to Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh,...

At age 11, the keen student of mythology suggested naming the newly discovered planet after the Roman god of the underworld.Venetia Phair, who was 11 years old when she suggested Pluto as the name of the newly discovered planet, has died in England. She was 90. She died at home in Epsom, south of London, on April 30, her family said. The cause of death was not disclosed. Phair suggested the name to her grandfather at breakfast in 1930. "My grandfather, as usual, opened the paper, The Times, and in it he read that a new planet had been discovered....

The United States is fighting two wars. The financial system is in crisis. Fewer Americans can afford to excercise their right to visit the magic kingdom. The terrorists behind the worst-ever attack on U.S. soil are regaining strength. The Pirates of the Caribbian have formed new alliances. The cost of propping up the economy will propel the federal budget deficit from the stratosphere into deep space, where not even Wall-E can save it. Mr. McCain has even attempted to prevent my fellow citizens of the Magic Kingdom from voting in this historic election. Americans badly need a leader who can...

The International Astronomical Union has decided on the term "plutoid" as a name for Pluto and other objects that just two years ago were redefined as "dwarf planets."

If David J. Tholen (University of Hawaii) is right, Pluto was probably hit by a small Kuiper Belt object in the not-too-distant past. One consequence of that collision, he argues, is seen in the planet's motion -- Pluto and its satellite Charon now waltz around each other in slightly out-of-round orbits. And since tidal forces in the tight planet-moon system should damp out any deviations from purly circular orbits within 10 million years or so, the impact must have occurred relatively recently. "It could have happened a century ago," Tholen says... Tholen and Marc W. Buie (Lowell Observatory)... found an...

I understood his travail. When I was a kid, I had a favorite planet. It seemed that all my friends did. Mine, for a reason I can no longer put my finger on, was Venus. I still recall a schoolyard fray in which I faced off against a kid who was ballyhooing the case for Jupiter as the "best" planet. The volume of recriminations rose to the point where a crowd gathered and one of the teachers had to separate us. Who knew that astronomy could stoke such passions? ...The thing is, like that long-ago schoolyard standoff pitting Venus against...

Pluto and its large moon Charon may have been bowled over when they were struck by wayward space rocks in the past, a new study suggests. If so, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft may find evidence of these rolls when it arrives at the distant worlds in 2015. Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona in Tucson, US, first suggested about 30 years ago that the basins gouged out by impacts would redistribute the mass of planetary bodies, causing them to roll over to re-stabilise themselves... Now, Francis Nimmo of the University of California in Santa Cruz, US, who led the...

Pluto has suffered yet another blow to its status. Not only has it been demoted from planet to "dwarf planet", research now shows that it cannot even lay claim to being the biggest of these. A study has confirmed that the dwarf planet Eris - whose discovery prompted Pluto's relegation from planet to dwarf - outranks it in mass. snip

"IAU presented the resolution to its General Assembly on August 16, giving the roughly 2500 attendees more than a week to discuss it. But the committee expected clear sailing...Instead, the '12-planet proposal' went down in flames. Critics objected that planets should also be defined by their orbital dynamics, not just by their size and shape. All eight 'major' planets, they pointed out, were massive enough to sweep up, fling away, or gravitationally control all the debris in their parts of the early solar sys[t]em, but Ceres and Pluto [and other candidate 'planets' among Kuiper Belt Objects] were not... the absurdity...

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has provided new data on the Jupiter system, stunning scientists with never-before-seen perspectives of the giant planet's atmosphere, rings, moons and magnetosphere. These new views include the closest look yet at the Earth-sized "Little Red Spot" storm churning materials through Jupiter's cloud tops; detailed images of small satellites herding dust and boulders through Jupiter's faint rings; and of volcanic eruptions and circular grooves on the planet's largest moons. New Horizons came to within 1.4 million miles of Jupiter on Feb. 28, using the planet's gravity to trim three years from its travel time to Pluto. For...

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Swarms of astronomers are expected to pack major observatories in Arizona this weekend hoping to see a rare "occultation" as Pluto crosses in front of a star and blots out its light. Sunday morning's event is exciting for scientists because it will give them a better idea of the size and makeup of Pluto's atmosphere. In an occultation -- not an eclipse, mind you -- the nearer object blots out the light and is backlit. If there is no atmosphere, it will blink out almost instantly, said Don McCarthy of the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory. But...

The International Astronomical Union may have demoted Pluto from its full-fledged status as a planet last year, designating it a "dwarf planet," but the state House of Representatives this week passed a joint memorial restoring Pluto to its full planetary glory whenever it passes over New Mexico, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported. Clyde Tombaugh, who helped create New Mexico State University's astronomy department and spent much of his life in Las Cruces, discovered photographic evidence of Pluto on Feb. 18, 1930, at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. Tombaugh's 94-year-old widow, Patsy Tombaugh, and his daughter, Annette Tombaugh-Sitze, who both...