NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft captured this view of Pluto’s small moon Nix on July 13, 2015, from a distance of about 360,000 miles (590,000 km).
This image shows Pluto’s small moon Nix. NASA scientists believe we are looking at one end of moon’s elongated body. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute.
Nix, also known as S/2005 P 2, was discovered in an image taken by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in May, 2005. In the discovery image, Nix is more than 6,000 times fainter than Pluto.
The small moon was named for the Greek goddess of darkness and night.
In mythology, Nix is also the mother of Charon, relevant to the giant impact believed to have created Pluto’s moons.
The initials N and H, for Nix and Hydra (Pluto’s outermost known moon), come from New Horizons.
Nix is about 25 miles (40 km) in diameter.
It orbits Pluto every 25 days at a distance of 30,260 miles (48,700 km).
NASA scientists have recently discovered that Nix, Hydra and another moon of Pluto, Styx, are locked together in resonance – meaning there is a precise ratio for their orbital periods, which is reminiscent of the resonance linking Jupiter’s moons Io, Europa and Ganymede.
The newest image of Nix was snapped on 13 July 2015 by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager.
The image shows features as small as 4 miles (6 km) across.
