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News Release Archive:

News Release 85 of 884

July 20, 2011 09:00 AM (EDT)

News Release Number: STScI-2011-23

NASA's Hubble Discovers Another Moon Around Pluto

Technical facts about this news release:

About the Object

Object Name:	Pluto
Object Description:	Dwarf Planet
Distance:	Although its orbit is highly eccentric, Pluto's average distance from the Sun is 39.44 astronomical units (roughly 3.6 billion miles or 5.9 billion kilometers).
Dimensions:	Pluto has a diameter of roughly 1,416 miles (2,280 kilometers) at the equator.

About the Data

Data Description:	This image was created from HST data from proposal 12436: M. Showalter (SETI Institute) and D. Hamilton (University of Maryland).
Instrument:	WFC3/UVIS
Exposure Date(s):	June 28, 2011 and July 3, 2011
Exposure Time:	2.7 hours
Filters:	F606W (V)

About the Image

Image Credit:	NASA, ESA, and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
Release Date:	July 20, 2011
Color:	This image was originally black and white and recorded only overall brightness. These brightness values were translated into a range of bluish hues. Such color "maps" can be useful in helping to distinguish subtly-varying brightness in an image. The colors in this image are not what human eyes would see looking at Pluto.
Orientation: