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Moons of Pluto. The dwarf planet Pluto has five natural satellites. [ 1 ] In order of distance from Pluto, they are Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. [ 2 ] Charon, the largest, is mutually tidally locked with Pluto, and is massive enough that Pluto and Charon are sometimes considered a binary dwarf planet.
These tholins were produced from methane, nitrogen, and related gases which may have been released by cryovolcanic eruptions on the moon, [22] [23] or may have been transferred over 19,000 km (12,000 mi) from the atmosphere of Pluto to the orbiting moon. [24] The New Horizons spacecraft is the only probe that has visited the Pluto system. It ...
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] Nix is the third moon of Pluto by distance ...
Pluto's origin and identity had long puzzled astronomers. One early hypothesis was that Pluto was an escaped moon of Neptune [161] knocked out of orbit by Neptune's largest moon, Triton. This idea was eventually rejected after dynamical studies showed it to be impossible because Pluto never approaches Neptune in its orbit.
Hydra orbits the Pluto-Charon barycenter at a distance of 64,738 km (40,226 mi). [10] Hydra is the outermost moon of Pluto, orbiting beyond Kerberos. [11] Similarly to all of Pluto's moons, Hydra's orbit is nearly circular and is coplanar to Charon's orbit; all of Pluto's moons have very low orbital inclinations to Pluto's equator. [11]
Kerberos is a small natural satellite of Pluto, about 19 km (12 mi) in its longest dimension. Kerberos is also the second-smallest moon of Pluto, after Styx. It was the fourth moon of Pluto to be discovered and its existence was announced on 20 July 2011. [1] It was imaged, along with Pluto and its four other moons, by the New Horizons ...
Geology of Pluto. The geology of Pluto consists of the characteristics of the surface, crust, and interior of Pluto. Because of Pluto's distance from Earth, in-depth study from Earth is difficult. Many details about Pluto remained unknown until 14 July 2015, when New Horizons flew through the Pluto system and began transmitting data back to ...
A total of five planets are going retrograde between May and September: Mercury, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. "Retrograde" is a term used to describe when a planet's orbit appears to slow ...