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The International Astronomical Union officially named these moons Nix (Pluto II, the inner of the two moons, formerly P 2) and Hydra (Pluto III, the outer moon, formerly P 1), on 21 June 2006. [4] Kerberos, announced on 20 July 2011, was discovered while searching for Plutonian rings.
The name of Pluto's moon Charon was suggested by James W. Christy, its discoverer, soon after its discovery. The other four moons are named Hydra , Nix , Kerberos , and Styx . Charon, Hydra, Nix, and Kerberos are all characters in Greek mythology, with ties to Hades (the Greek equivalent of Pluto).
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.
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]
The convention for naming Plutonian moons is to use names associated with the god Pluto in classical mythology. [22] To decide on names for P4 and P5, Mark Showalter and the SETI Institute , on behalf of the discovery team, conducted a non-binding Internet poll in 2013, in which the general public was invited to vote for their favorite names.
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 ...
(Pluto has four smaller moons besides Charon.) For example, Mars is orbited by two tiny potato-shaped moons called Phobos and Deimos, which are likely two asteroids that were captured by the red ...
A map of Pluto showing the names officially approved by the IAU as of 12 February 2025, along with many informal names in bold and italics.. This is a list of named geological features on Pluto, identified by scientists working with data from the New Horizons spacecraft.