JennyBond
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 Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 9:42 pm Post subject: Moon discovered orbiting tenth planet |
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The tenth planet in the solar system has a moon at least a tenth of its size. The discovery, made on 10 September with an adaptive optics system on the Keck II telescope, will allow astronomers to pin down the mass of both objects.
The tenth planet is not officially a planet - for now its only official designation is 2003 UB313. By convention, its moon - announced by the International Astronomical Union on Sunday - is designated S/2005 (2003 UB313) 1.
But Mike Brown, the Caltech astronomer who revealed 2003 UB313 in July and nicknamed it Xena after the television warrior princess, is calling the moon Gabrielle, after the princess's companion.
Moons of "trans-Neptunian" objects - which orbit farther from the Sun than Neptune - are very hard to see because they are faint and appear very close in the sky to the objects they orbit. But Brown began searching for a moon as soon as he found 2003 UB313. "Having a moon is just inherently cool," he says.
Moons can also reveal vital information about how a planet formed. And astronomers can calculate the masses of both planet and moon by measuring the moon's orbit and period.
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