These Hubble Space Telescope images, taken by the Advanced Camera for
Surveys, reveal Pluto, its large moon Charon, and the planet's two new putative
satellites. In the short-exposure image [left], taken June 11, 2002, the
candidate moons cannot be seen. They do, however, appear in the middle and
right-hand images. Longer exposure times were used to take these images. Pluto
and Charon are overexposed in these images, causing the bright streaks or
"blooms" that emerge vertically from them. The candidate moons are not
overexposed because they are thousands of times less bright than Pluto and
Charon. In these unprocessed images, various optical artifacts of the Advanced
Camera for Surveys system are visible, such as the radial spokes of light caused
by the telescope's optics. The enhanced-color images of Pluto and Charon were
constructed by combining images taken in filters near 475 nanometers (blue) and
555 nanometers (green-yellow). The images of the new satellites were taken in a
single filter centered near 606 nanometers (yellow), so no color information is
available for them.
