MEXICO: Some of Pluto’s moons have a rugby ball-like shape and spin around erratically in orbit, according to an updated portrait of the distant dwarf planet system.
Measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that Hydra and Nix, the second- and third-biggest of Pluto’s five known moons, are elongated and behave in a very different way than Earth’s own satellite.“Peculiar”
“They tumble. They flip over so that sometimes the north pole becomes the south pole. It’s a very, very peculiar dance,” study co-author Mark Showalter of the SETI research institute told AFP.
The moons do not change their position in orbit, but their orientation in space, he explained, “just tumbling, spinning in a random direction.”
Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, together form what is called a “binary planet”, the only one in our solar system, with four smaller moons orbiting the central duo.
The imbalanced and shifting gravitational field created by Pluto and Charon is what sends the smaller moons tumbling unpredictably, according to a University of Maryland statement.
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