Pluto's moons named

June 23, 2006 The two recently discovered moons of the planet were officially named  and  by the, the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies.

The moons were discovered in May last year by the Pluto Companion Search Team, a team of scientists from the (SwRI), the 's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the  and, using images taken from the Hubble space telescope. The moons were designated as S/2005 P1 (Hydra) and P2 (Nix) upon discovery.

Their discovery comes 27 years after the discovery of Pluto's largest moon. The two moons are roughly 5000 times fainter than Pluto and two to three times farther from Pluto, compared to Charon. The two bodies are roughly 50 km in diameter.

The names are derived from Greek mythology, where is a monster with the body of a serpent and nine heads and Nix is the goddess of darkness and night. is also the mother of, an allusion to the giant impact which is believed to have created the three satellites of Pluto, with Charon borne of the material from which Nix formed. himself is the god of the underworld.