Pole Dancing Moons!

From the BBC News App today:

Quote:

Hubble has revealed fascinating new details about Pluto's four smaller moons. At a distance of five billion km, the telescope only sees the satellites as faint pinpricks of light, and yet it has been able to discern information on their size, colour, and rotational and orbital characteristics. Hubble finds the little objects to be somewhat chaotic in their behaviour. They are very likely wobbling end over end as they move through their orbits. "If you can imagine what it would be like to live on [these moons], you would literally not know where the Sun was coming up tomorrow," said Mark Showalter from the Seti Institute, US. "The Sun might rise in the west and set in the east. The Sun might rise in the west and set in the north for that matter. "In fact, if you had real estate on the north pole… you might discover one day you’re on the south pole."

One should expect that somebody speaking on behalf of the Seti Institute would at least understand that the concept of north and south poles derives from a body rotating about an axis, surely!

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1RLV9wh