Pandemonium! Motion of Pluto's Moons Perplexes Scientists
New Horizons reveals the orbits of Pluto's four smallest moons to be even more chaotic than expected
By Calla Cofield and SPACE.com | November 10, 2015
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
The orbits of Pluto's four smallest moons are even more chaotic than scientists had expected, according to new results from the New Horizons mission, which made a close flyby of Pluto in July.
"The way I would describe this system is not just chaos, but pandemonium," Mark Showalter, a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission, said today (Nov. 9) during a news conference at the meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. "We honestly have not seen anything like this before, and we still don't know what to make of it."...
New Horizons reveals the orbits of Pluto's four smallest moons to be even more chaotic than expected
By Calla Cofield and SPACE.com | November 10, 2015
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
The orbits of Pluto's four smallest moons are even more chaotic than scientists had expected, according to new results from the New Horizons mission, which made a close flyby of Pluto in July.
"The way I would describe this system is not just chaos, but pandemonium," Mark Showalter, a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission, said today (Nov. 9) during a news conference at the meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. "We honestly have not seen anything like this before, and we still don't know what to make of it."...