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Pluto (bottom left) compared in size to the Earth and the Moon. Pluto's diameter is 2 376.6 ± 3.2 km [5] and its mass is (1.303 ± 0.003) × 10 22 kg, 17.7% that of the Moon (0.22% that of Earth). [125] Its surface area is 1.774 443 × 10 7 km 2, or just slightly bigger than Russia or Antarctica (particularly including the Antarctic sea ice ...
Charon and Earth’s moon are both a large fraction of the size of the main body they orbit, which is unlike other smaller moons orbiting planets throughout our solar system. (Pluto has four ...
Charon and Pluto orbit each other every 6.387 days. The two objects are gravitationally locked to one another, so each keeps the same face towards the other. This is a case of mutual tidal locking, as compared to that of the Earth and the Moon, where the Moon always shows the same face to Earth, but not vice versa.
Many TNOs are often just assumed to have Pluto's density of 2.0 g/cm 3, but it is just as likely that they have a comet-like density of only 0.5 g/cm 3. [ 4 ] For example, if a TNO is incorrectly assumed to have a mass of 3.59 × 10 20 kg based on a radius of 350 km with a density of 2 g/cm 3 but is later discovered to have a radius of only 175 ...
Webb telescope reveals surprising details of Pluto's moon Charon. Will Dunham. ... compared to the 238,855 miles (384,400 km) on average separating Earth from its moon.
By comparison, the Moon as viewed from Earth has an angular diameter of only 31 minutes of arc, or just over half a degree of arc. Therefore, Charon would appear to have eight times the diameter, or 25 times the area of the Moon; this is due to Charon's proximity to Pluto rather than size, as despite having just over one-third of a Lunar radius ...
Determining whether a moon is currently in hydrostatic equilibrium requires close observation, and is easier to disprove than to prove. Earth's entirely rocky moon solidified out of equilibrium billions of years ago, [14] but most of the other six moons larger than Pluto, four of which are predominantly icy, are assumed to still be in ...
Visual comparison of the sizes of Earth and the Moon (above right) and Pluto–Charon (below right). In astronomy, a double planet (also binary planet) is a binary satellite system where both objects are planets, or planetary-mass objects, and whose joint barycenter is external to both planetary bodies.