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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.
Pages in category "Moons of Pluto" The following 6 pages are in this category, out of 6 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. ...
A map of Charon with IAU names Comparison between Pluto's Sputnik Planitia and Charon's informally named Vulcan Planitia. Unlike Pluto's surface, which is composed of nitrogen and methane ices, Charon's surface appears to be dominated by the less volatile water ice.
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.
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]
Pluto likely acquired large moon Charon in a “kiss and capture” collision billions of years ago. It may have created a subsurface ocean on the icy dwarf planet.
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]