What Is a Dwarf Planet? A dwarf planet is a celestial body that is in…
Browsing: Styx
Styx is one of Pluto’s moons, discovered in 2012 by a team using the Hubble Space Telescope. Named after the mythological river that separates the world of the living from the realm of the dead in ancient Greek mythology, Styx is the fifth moon confirmed to orbit Pluto. It is part of a complex system of satellites that includes Charon, Nix, Hydra, and Kerberos. Styx is the smallest among these, with an estimated diameter of about 10 to 25 kilometers. Due to its size and distance, details about its surface composition and specific features remain less known compared to the larger moons like Charon. Styx, along with the other small moons, orbits Pluto in a plane that is nearly coplanar with Charon’s orbit, suggesting a possibly complex evolutionary history involving gravitational interactions within this satellite system.
These icy bodies are the leftovers from planet formation. In the distant reaches of the…
New information from NASA’s New Horizons Mission has revealed more than 50 exciting discoveries about…
NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft has captured images of Pluto’s tiny moon Kerberos, completing the family…
New images from NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft reveal the shape and size of Pluto’s smallest…
NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft reveals new images of Pluto’s moons Hydra and Nix. Pluto has…
As astrophysicists around the world watch to see what NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft will reveal…
NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft shows a close-up image of an equatorial region near the base…
NASA’s New Horizons Spacecraft has only just reached Pluto, but it has already solved a…
New research provides important constraints on the sequence of events that led to the formation…
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has photographed Kerberos and Styx – the smallest and faintest of…
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft views Pluto’s moons Nix and Hydra as it continues on its…
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics held a new debate to discuss the planetary status of…
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is only a year away from Pluto. This new ScienceCast video…
A newly published study looks at the formation of Pluto and its low-mass satellites, finding…
A new ScienceCast video details what NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft might find when it reaches…
Kerberos and Styx have been officially recognized as the names for the fourth and fifth…