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
Greek mythology in popular culture Rita Boumi-Pappa; rarely use mythological references, which Christopher Robinson attributes to the "problem of gender roles, both inside and outside the myths." Martin Winter says that the idea that many commentaries about the widespread use of Greek myths throughout Western culture does not take into account the vast difference between what a modern viewer takes from the story and what it would have meant to an ancient Greek. Greek mythology in popular culture Elements of Greek mythology have appeared many times in culture and pop culture. The Greek myths had originally been adopted into the culture of ancient Rome, and