Astroblog: Plutos Newest Moons Named - Now get them in Celestia!

Thursday, July 04, 2013

Plutos Newest Moons Named - Now get them in Celestia!


Pluto, with all 5 named Moons in orbit. Visualised in Celestia. Click to embiggen	Pluto, Charon, Kerebros and Hydra as seen from Styx. Click to embiggen.

Plutos' newest Moons, P4 and P5 (found in 2011 and 2012) have finally been given official names. Vulcan, the number one name in the public vote (from the Star Trek fans) did not get the guernsey as a) it names a (currently nonexistent) family of asteroids and b) Vulcan is a bit hot for a cold Moon, so the second and third place getters, Kerebros (the dog that guards Plutos underworld) and Styx (the goddess who ruled over the eponymous underworld river), are in instead. The full story is here.

Of course I've made Celestia files for the newly named Moons.

As usual, copy the data here to a plain text file (newplutomoons.ssc), copy the file to the Celestia extras folder. Celestia already has Charon, Hydra and Nix. Now I have to update my Celestia Moon tour.
===============newplutomoons.ssc======================================
# Newest Moons of Pluto
# http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/20jul_p4/
# Now Named Kerebros and Styx
# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Pluto
# http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/detail/iau1303/

"Kerberos:Pluto IV:134340 Pluto IV:S/2011 P1" "Sol/Pluto"
{
    Class "minormoon"
    Texture         "asteroid.jpg" # "spectrally neutral"
    Mesh        "asteroid.cms"
    Radius        17 #upper limit

    InfoURL "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Pluto"

    OrbitFrame {
        EquatorJ2000 { Center "Sol/Pluto-Charon" }
    }

    EllipticalOrbit
    {
    Epoch        2455740.5    # 2011 June 28
    Period        32.1        # mean
    SemiMajorAxis    59000        # mean
    Eccentricity    0.00        # mean
    Inclination    96.362          #Using Hydra
        AscendingNode    223.077         #Using Hydra
    ArgOfPericenter    45.4            #Using Hydra
    MeanLongitude    322.4           #Using Hydra
    }

    Albedo 0.18
}
"Styx:Pluto V:134340 Pluto V:S/2012 P1" "Sol/Pluto"
{
    Class "minormoon"
    Texture         "asteroid.jpg" # "spectrally neutral"
    Mesh        "asteroid.cms"
    Radius        12 #upper limit

    InfoURL "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Pluto"

    OrbitFrame {
        EquatorJ2000 { Center "Sol/Pluto-Charon" }
    }

    EllipticalOrbit
    {
    Epoch        2455740.5    # 2011 June 28
    Period        20.2        # mean
    SemiMajorAxis    42000        # mean
    Eccentricity    0.00        # mean
    Inclination    96.362          #Using Hydra
        AscendingNode    223.077         #Using Hydra
    ArgOfPericenter    45.4            #Using Hydra
    MeanLongitude    322.4           #Using Hydra
    }

    Albedo 0.18
}
===============================================================

# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:47 am