Hydra (moon) the Hydra, the nine-headed serpent that battled Heracles in Greek mythology. The nine heads of Hydra are a reference to Pluto's tenure as the ninth planet; its initial, "H", refers to the Hubble Telescope, which discovered Hydra and, together with Nix, to the "New Horizons" mission whose safe passage was the motivation for taking the Hubble images. Hydra orbits the barycenter of the system in the same plane as Charon and Nix, at a distance of about 65,000 km. Its eccentricity of 0.0059 is small, but significantly non-zero, and the largest of those of Pluto's small moons (slightly larger than
Apaturia (Greek mythology) Apaturia (Greek mythology) Apaturia () was an epithet given to more than one goddess in Greek mythology. The name meant "the deceitful". The name Apaturia was given to the goddess Athena by Aethra, the mother of Theseus, who received a dream from Athena urging her to travel to the island of Sphairia to pour a libation for a charioteer of Pelops. After Aethra awoke she traveled to the island and was there raped by the god Poseidon. Aethra later established there a temple to this aspect of the goddess, and started a custom where brides would offer up their maidenhood