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Pluto's Newest Moons Named Hydra & Nix

from Space.com

The International Astronomical Union has officially christened Pluto's two newest satellites Nix and Hydra.

The tiny satellites were discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope last May and are believed to have been formed from the same giant impact that carved out Charon, Pluto's third satellite, discovered in 1978.

The names were proposed this spring by the team that discovered the satellites. Before the satellites received their official names, the satellites were called P1 and P2.

In Greek mythology, Nyx was the goddess of the night and the mother of Charon, the boatsman who ferried souls across the River Styx into the underworld ruled by Pluto. The IAU changed the spelling to "Nix" after the Egyptian spelling of the goddess to avoid confusion with two asteroids that had already been named "Nyx."

The outermost of Pluto's two new satellites is named after Hydra, the nine-headed mythological serpent that guarded Pluto's realm.

"We thought it was an appropriately scary image to be the guard at the gate," said Alan Stern, an astronomer with the Southwest Research Institute who led the team that initially discovered the satellites

Stern said that the team also considered the name Cerberus, the three-headed hound who also guarded the gates to Hades, but rejected it because many people associate Pluto with the Disney cartoon character, and having one object in the system named after a dog was enough.