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Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most- massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
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.
Currently, there is strong consensus among astronomers that five members of the Kuiper belt are dwarf planets. [197] [202] Many dwarf planet candidates are being considered, pending further data for verification. [203] Pluto (29.7–49.3 AU) is the largest known object in the Kuiper belt.
Gonggong (2007) A dwarf planet is a small planetary-mass object that is in direct orbit around the Sun, massive enough to be gravitationally rounded, but insufficient to achieve orbital dominance like the eight classical planets of the Solar System. The prototypical dwarf planet is Pluto, which for decades was regarded as a planet before the ...
New Horizons was more than 203,000,000 km (126,000,000 mi) away from Pluto when it began taking the photos, which showed Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. On 20 March 2015, NASA invited the general public to suggest names for surface features that will be discovered on Pluto and Charon. [ 26 ]
On February 12, 2015, NASA released new images of Pluto (taken from January 25 to 31) from the approaching probe. [132] [133] New Horizons was more than 203 million km (126 million mi) away from Pluto when it began taking the photos, which showed Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. The exposure time was too short to see Pluto's smaller, much ...
Charon (/ ˈ k ɛər ɒ n,-ə n / KAIR-on, -ən or / ˈ ʃ ær ə n / SHARR-ən), [note 1] or (134340) Pluto I, is the largest of the five known natural satellites of the dwarf planet Pluto. It has a mean radius of 606 km (377 mi). Charon is the sixth-largest known trans-Neptunian object after Pluto, Eris, Haumea, Makemake, and Gonggong. [18]
Styx (moon) Styx is a small natural satellite of Pluto whose discovery was announced on 11 July 2012. It was discovered by use of the Hubble Space Telescope, and is the smallest of the five known moons of Pluto. It was imaged along with Pluto and Pluto's other moons by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015, albeit poorly with only a single ...