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The innermost and largest moon, Charon, was discovered by James Christy on 22 June 1978, nearly half a century after Pluto was discovered. This led to a substantial revision in estimates of Pluto's size, which had previously assumed that the observed mass and reflected light of the system were all attributable to Pluto alone.
Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of the Moon, and one-third its volume. Pluto has a moderately eccentric and inclined orbit, ranging from 30 to 49 astronomical units (4.5 to 7.3 billion kilometres; 2.8 to 4.6 billion miles) from the Sun. Light from the Sun takes 5.5 hours to reach Pluto at its orbital distance of 39.5 AU (5.91 billion km; 3 ...
Its gravitational influence is such that the barycenter of the Plutonian system lies outside Pluto, and the two bodies are tidally locked to each other. [19] The dwarf planet systems Pluto–Charon and Eris–Dysnomia are the only known examples of mutual tidal locking in the Solar System, [20] though it is likely that Orcus–Vanth is another ...
Observations by the James Webb Space Telescope are giving scientists a fuller understanding about the composition and evolution of Pluto's moon Charon, the largest moon orbiting any of our solar ...
NASA launched the New Horizon spacecraft in 2006 to learn more about the icy dwarf planet Pluto. Here are some of the first photos from that mission, taken from between 125 and 115 million miles away.
The 19 moons that are known to be large enough to have been rounded by their own gravity are listed in bold. The seven largest moons, which are larger than any of the known dwarf planets, are listed in bold and italic. Sidereal period differs from semi-major axis because a moon's speed depends both on the mass of its primary and its distance ...
The small blurry dots in the newly-released photo are Pluto and Charon, the largest of Pluto's moons. New Horizons captured the image from 71 million miles away. New Horizons captures its first ...
Nix is a natural satellite of Pluto, with a diameter of 49.8 km (30.9 mi) across its longest dimension. [3] It was discovered along with Pluto's outermost moon Hydra on 15 May 2005 by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope, [1] and was named after Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. [10]