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New Horizons Reveals The Mystery Of Kerberos

NASA just released the images we’ve all been waiting for – our first look at Pluto’s fifth moon Kerberos. New Horizons passed within 396,100 kilometers (245,600 miles) of Kerberos, capturing images of Pluto’s tiny moon just seven hours before its closest approach. The newly released image is a combination of four separate images captured by the spacecraft’s LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and was deconvoluted to reduce pixelation and reveal Kerberos in unprecedented detail.

So far, Pluto has been full of surprises, and the new pictures prove that Pluto has many more tricks up its sleeve. Kerberos may look like nothing more than a pixelated blob, but researchers can tell a lot from these images. Due to Kerberos’ diminutive size – a mere 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) by 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) – we are not going to get as detailed images as we see with Nix, but we can expect exciting science data.

Prior to the Pluto encounter, scientists used Hubble images to “weigh” the tiny moon and measured its gravitational influence on its neighboring moons. The science team determined the force was surprisingly strong with Kerberos, as the moon had a strong influence over its neighbors, indicating it was relatively large and massive. The moon appeared very faint in Hubble images, suggesting it had a dark charcoal-like surface. However, the new images tell a very different story. “Once again, the Pluto system has surprised us,” New Horizons project scientist Hal Weaver, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, said in a press release.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/new-horizons-reveals-mystery-kerberos

New Horizons Reveals The Mystery Of Kerberos NASA just released the images we’ve all been waiting for – our first look at Pluto’s fifth moon Kerberos. New Horizons passed within 396,100 kilometers (245,600 miles) of Kerberos, capturing images of Pluto’s tiny moon just seven hours before its closest approach. The newly released image is a combi…

Enormous Asteroid Discovered Last Week Will Whizz Past Earth On Halloween

Two asteroids will pass by Earth this Halloween. The first is 2009 FD, a peculiarly dark asteroid, which will make its closest approach on October 29. The second, 2015 TB145, will fly-by on Halloween. The two asteroids won't be visible to the naked eye, even at their closest approach. The astronomical events have been announced in NASA's Goldstone Radar Observation Plan.

2009 FD will approach within 6,194,000 km of Earth, about 16.3 times further away than the Moon. The asteroid was discovered in February 2009, a month before its closest recorded approach to Earth on March 27, 2009, at a distance of 624,100 km. 2015 TB145 will pass about 500,000 km from Earth, just beyond the lunar orbit.

2009 FD has been tracked by several instruments since its discovery. It was first estimated to be 130 meters in size by NASA’s Near Earth Program. A better estimate for its size came from NASA’s NEOWISE, which gave a value of 470 meters, although this is considered an upper limit.

2015 TB145 was discovered just over a week ago by the Pan-STARRS I telescope in Hawaii, and it has an estimated size of 320 meters. The passing of 2015 TB145 will be the closest approach by something this large until asteroid August 2027, when 1999 AN10 will pass within one lunar distance (380,000 km). NASA has given these objects a value of 1 on the Torino Scale, which is the value assigned to non-dangerous asteroids.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/halloween-asteroids-are-not-scaring-us

Enormous Asteroid Discovered Last Week Will Whizz Past Earth On Halloween Two asteroids will pass by Earth this Halloween. The first is 2009 FD, a peculiarly dark asteroid, which will make its closest approach on October 29. The second, 2015 TB145, will fly-by on Halloween. The two asteroids won't be visible to the naked eye, even at their closest approach. The astronomic…