Check this out.  It appears that Hubble has discovered that Pluto has 3 moons:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/10/31/pluto.moons.reut/index.html

 

Wow! That's pretty neat. Haven't heard of that.

Those aren't moons! It's Chip and Dale!!

I believe we're living in a golden age of discovery

"Three rocks about a cube of ice doth not a planet maketh."

--from the Book of Kuyper 1:13

their names are Nix and Hydra
but i dont know which is which

http://space.com/scienceastronomy/060621_nix_hydra.html short article with more links at the end

 

So instead of

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas

its gonna be My Very Erotic Mother just served us Noogies?

I mean seriously, Pluto might be a series of objects connected with a belt similiar to the Asteroid belt, I bet if they look hard enough, most of what they see in Plutos distance may all be just floating asteroids or rocks, possible a planet that at one point exploded for some reason, who knows.

Pluto didnt even deserve to get charon.

GoNasa1993,you  DONT EVEN DESERVE to post anything about Pluto!Pluto may have got Charon the same way we got our Moon,Luna.So you mean GoNasa1993,Earth doesnt even deserve 1 of the largest moons in our Solar System???This 2nd half of my message is for other astronomers:Alan Stern,Principal Investigator of Pluto-bound New Horizons,believes that Nix and Hydra formed the same time Charon was,and also he believes that there may be other pluto moon or more that orbits very close to Pluto we can hardly see it due to Pluto's bright reflection.

hello guys,

last year one japanese planetary scientist, if I remember correctly-Gora Komatsu...whatever...who has worked at the LPL(lunar and planetary lab) at the Uni. of Arizona for many years, had a lecture in our country about minor bodies in our solar system.

After the lecture one student has asked him about the moons of Pluto. He asked: "I've recently read one article in space.com about pluto's second and third moons Hydra and Nix are confirmed by Hubble telescope observations, what do you think about this, it shouldn't be a planet?" 

And the scientist said that, the dynamics of celestial motion of those objects are not proved 100%.

Tuugii 

The link I posted no longer works, the page has been deleted.  The Hubble photos can be found here:

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/solar_system_collection/pr2006015a/

 

 

and here is the link of the space.com article:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/051031_pluto_moons.html

Tuugii 

If you astronomers do not know what Pluto's family are named after,I will tell you:

Pluto is name after the Roman God of Underworld(The world where dead living things' sprits(or souls) are living),as 11 year old girl Venetia suggested,as Pluto is very far away from the Sun,it is probably a very dark and cold world out there.

Charon is named after the Greek ferryman of the dead sprits to ferry them to the underworld.

Hydra is named after a Roman mythlogic 9 headed ferocious creature who is said to have a link to the underworld.

Nix is named after the Greek Goddess of Darkness and Night,which is also similarly suits the moon like Pluto as mentioned above.

 I thought only planets have moons!

Ya Lah!Pluto is a planet!Thats why!!;Still want to say Pluto is not a planet...

What I find most amazing about its moons system is that Their orbits are almost at the same angle of incline orbiting Pluto.Other Moons systems arent like that.

I don't know where you got that idea.  Almost all other moons are like that.  Maybe all.  I've never heard of one that's orbit wasn't in or near the plane of the planet's equator.

The same thing as the planets, they orbit in or near the plane of the Sun's equator.  Another reason Pluto shouldn't be called a planet, because it doesn't

Valdric,

I guess that isn't, for example Charon doesn't orbits the pluto.

Tuugii 

ASTRONOMYDOMINE wrote:

I thought only planets have moons!

Mercury and Venus have no moons.  Mars has two captured asteroids.  Dozens and dozens of asteroids have satellites.

http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/astro/asteroidmoons.html

The presence or absence of a satellite, or moon if you prefer to be less precise, is not a meaningful property of planethood.

Dave Mitsky