{"id":18335,"date":"2015-06-05T06:05:52","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T06:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/research\/three-of-plutos-moons-bound-by-gravity-in-a-peculiar-pattern\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T10:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T05:21:08","slug":"three-of-plutos-moons-bound-by-gravity-in-a-peculiar-pattern","status":"publish","type":"research","link":"https:\/\/www.editage.com\/insights\/three-of-plutos-moons-bound-by-gravity-in-a-peculiar-pattern","title":{"rendered":"Three of Pluto&#8217;s moons bound by gravity in a peculiar pattern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Pluto, the dwarf planet, has five satellites out of which three satellites named Styx, Nix, and Hydra have become gravitationally locked and are moving together in an unusual orbit. Researchers observed that the three moons of Pluto have formed a peculiar pattern known as a three-body resonance. This observation would prove to be vital as NASA\u2019s New Horizons spacecraft, whose mission includes hunting for undiscovered moons of Pluto, is headed towards Pluto in the coming month and can help understand the strange assortment Pluto\u2019s moons have created. Mark Showalter, a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, whose\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">team is studying Pluto\u2019s satellite system,\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">also found that Pluto\u2019s moon Kerberos has a darker hue than Nix and Hydra, which suggests that it is made of a different material. They are awaiting New Horizons\u2019 observations to cognize Pluto\u2019s mysterious satellite orbit pattern.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-size: 14px;\">Read more in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/pluto-s-moons-move-in-synchrony-1.17681\"><em>Nature<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33313,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"new_tags":[],"series":[],"subject":[2872],"class_list":["post-18335","research","type-research","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","subject-earth-and-planetary-science"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Three of Pluto&#039;s moons bound by gravity in a peculiar pattern | Editage Insights<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Three of Pluto&#039;s moons bound by gravity in a peculiar 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