Charon is the largest moon of Pluto, discovered in 1978 by American astronomer James Christy. It is named after the mythological ferryman who transported souls across the river Styx in the underworld. Charon is unique because it is unusually large relative to Pluto, being about half the size of the dwarf planet itself. This size relationship makes Pluto-Charon the only known binary system in the Solar System where both bodies orbit a point in space outside either body, known as the barycenter. Charon’s surface features, including canyons, craters, and varied terrains, have been revealed in more detail by NASA’s New Horizons mission, which flew by the Pluto system in 2015. The moon has a mostly water-ice composition with a surface marked by a mix of water and ammonia ices, hinting at geological activity in its past. The gravitational interactions between Pluto and Charon have led to tidal locking, so the same side of Charon always faces Pluto.
Research combined spacecraft data with new lab experiments and models of Pluto’s largest moon. Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists combined data from NASA’s New Horizons…
Before NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft flew through the Pluto system in July 2015, many New Horizons scientists expected Charon to be a monotonous, crater-battered world….
Legendary explorers and visionaries, real and fictitious, are among those immortalized by the IAU in the first set of official surface-feature names for Pluto’s largest…
Using data from New Horizons and digital elevation models of Pluto and its largest moon Charon, NASA scientists have created two flyover movies that offer…
New research reveals that Charon’s reddish polar coloring comes from Pluto itself. In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA’s approaching New Horizons spacecraft first…
Images from NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft reveal an unusual canyon system that’s far longer and deeper than the Grand Canyon. The inset above magnifies a…
Astronomers at the University of Rochester have developed a new model that could offer a new explanation as to how cracks on icy moons, such…
New images from the New Horizons Spacecraft suggest that Pluto’s moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded, pushing…
NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft has captured images of Pluto and Charon completing the rotation of a full day. Pluto’s day is 6.4 Earth days long….
Astronomers have discovered a striking contrast between one of the fresh craters on Pluto’s largest moon Charon and a neighboring crater dotting the moon’s Pluto-facing…
NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft provides a close-up view of Pluto’s moon Charon. The sweeping mosaic above is made from the highest-resolution images that NASA’s New…
New images from NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft are the highest resolution images yet of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. The images reveal a surprisingly complex and…
An updated portrait of Pluto and Charon from NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft. The latest two full-frame images of Pluto and Charon were collected separately by…
This new image from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager reveals new details of Pluto’s largest moon Charon. The image was taken on July 13,…
These new false color images from the New Horizons Spacecraft reveal that Pluto and Charon are truly complex worlds. New Horizons has obtained impressive new…
NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft has only just reached Pluto, but it has already solved a decades-long debated question about the dwarf planet: How big is…
Another day, another great set of images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager showing Pluto and Charon. They’re a fascinating pair: Two icy worlds,…