Home | Site Map | What's New | Image Index | Copyright | Posters | ScienceViews | Science Fiction Timelines |

PHOTO INDEX OF
PRIMARY TARGETS
ASTEROIDS
COMETS
EARTH
JUPITER
KUIPER BELT
MARS
MERCURY
METEORITES
NEPTUNE
OORT CLOUD
PLUTO
SATURN
SOLAR SYSTEM
SPACE
SUN
URANUS
VENUS
ORDER PRINTS

OTHER PHOTO INDEXES
ALL TARGETS
PHOTO CATEGORIES

SCIENCEVIEWS
AMERICAN INDIAN
AMPHIBIANS
BIRDS
BUGS
FINE ART
FOSSILS
THE ISLANDS
HISTORICAL PHOTOS
MAMMALS
OTHER
PARKS
PLANTS
RELIGIOUS
REPTILES
SCIENCEVIEWS PRINTS

Hubble Views the Pluto System

Target Name:  Pluto, Charon
Spacecraft:  Hubble Space Telescope
Produced by:  NASA, ESA, H. Weaver (JHU/APL), A. Stern (SwRI), and the Hubble Space Telescope Pluto Companion Search Team
Copyright: Copyright Free
Date Released: 31 October 2005

Related Documents
Download Options

NameTypeWidth x HeightSize
plutomoons3.jpgJPEG800 x 46431K

These Hubble Space Telescope images, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, reveal Pluto, its large moon Charon, and the planet's two new putative satellites. In the short-exposure image [left], taken June 11, 2002, the candidate moons cannot be seen. They do, however, appear in the middle and right-hand images. Longer exposure times were used to take these images. Pluto and Charon are overexposed in these images, causing the bright streaks or "blooms" that emerge vertically from them. The candidate moons are not overexposed because they are thousands of times less bright than Pluto and Charon. In these unprocessed images, various optical artifacts of the Advanced Camera for Surveys system are visible, such as the radial spokes of light caused by the telescope's optics. The enhanced-color images of Pluto and Charon were constructed by combining images taken in filters near 475 nanometers (blue) and 555 nanometers (green-yellow). The images of the new satellites were taken in a single filter centered near 606 nanometers (yellow), so no color information is available for them.

Copyright © 1995-2016 by Calvin J. Hamilton. All rights reserved.