Orbit movie of Pluto and its moons, annotated

Animation illustrating orbits of Pluto, Charon, Nix, and Hydra about the system's barycenter. Derived from two Hubble Space Telescope images and a diagram of the orbits.

 

Names orbit with bodies.

 

Reprojected plane of orbits to face-on view, determined angles swept in the three days separating original images, made new frames based on date/angle. Each time step represents one Earth day.

 

Image 1: 15 May, 2005 hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2005/19/image/b/

 

Image 2: 18 May, 2005 hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2005/19/image/c/

 

Orbit diagram: hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2005/19/image/h/

 

Video created by R. Kline, Cornell University Department of Astronomy

 

14,391 views
3 faves
0 comments
Uploaded on January 25, 2010
Taken on January 25, 2010