Tenth planet has a moon

[Martin]

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/10/01/new.planet.moon.ap/index.html

 

---sample from CNN article---

'Planet Xena' has a sidekick: Gabrielle

 

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The astronomers who claim to have discovered the 10th planet in the Earth's solar system have made another intriguing announcement: it has a moon...

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http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1603_1.asp

 

---exerpt from Sky and Telescope---

A Moon for the "10th Planet"

 

October 2, 2005 The solar system's largest known Kuiper Belt object (KBO), the recently discovered body known as 2003 UB313, isn't wandering through space alone. Michael E. Brown (Caltech) and his colleagues have discovered that it has a small companion,... The team doesn't yet know the moon's orbit, since they have only a single night of images... Still, Brown says, "by January we should know the orbit."

 

The satellite is about 100 times (5 magnitudes) fainter than 19th-magnitude 2003 UB313. So if its surface has about the same reflectivity, its diameter is about a tenth that of the main body. That would make the satellite about 270 kilometers across.

 

... For now, Brown's team has been calling them by the nicknames Xena and Gabrielle, after the partners from the TV show Xena: Warrior Princess.

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