Charon, discovered in 1978, is, depending on the definition employed, either the largest moon of Pluto or one member of a double dwarf planet with Pluto being the other member.
With the discovery in 2005 of two other moons of Pluto (Nix and Hydra), Charon is now also referred to as Pluto I.
The New Horizons mission is scheduled to visit Charon and Pluto in July 2015.
Charon was discovered by astronomer James Christy on June 22, 1978 when he was examining highly magnified images of Pluto on photographic plates taken a couple of months before.
Christy noticed that a slight bulge appeared periodically.
Later, the bulge was confirmed on plates dating back to April 29, 1965.
For more information about the topic Charon (moon), read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Uranus' natural satellites Uranus has 27 known moons. The first two moons (Titania and Oberon) were discovered by William Herschel on March 13, 1787. Two more moons (Ariel and ... >
read more
Deimos (moon) Deimos is probably an asteroid that was perturbed by Jupiter into an orbit that allowed it to be captured by Mars, though this hypothesis is still in ... >
read more
Dysnomia (moon of Eris) Dysnomia, is a moon of the dwarf planet Eris. The satellite is about 60 times fainter than Eris, and its diameter is estimated to be approximately ... >
read more
Ceres (dwarf planet) Ceres, also designated 1 Ceres or (1) Ceres, is the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System and the only one located in the main asteroid belt. ... >
read more
Eris (dwarf planet) Eris is the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system. It is a trans-Neptunian object (TNO), orbiting the Sun in a region of space known as the ... >
read more
Phobos (moon) Phobos is the larger and innermost of Mars' two moons, and is named after Phobos, son of Ares (Mars) from Greek Mythology. Phobos orbits closer to a ... >
read more
Neptune's natural satellites Neptune has 13 known moons. The largest by far is Triton, discovered by William Lassell just 17 days after the discovery of Neptune itself. It took a ... >
read more
Pluto Pluto, designated (134340) Pluto, in the Minor Planet Center catalogue, is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the solar system. It orbits ... >
read more
Mercury (planet) Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the solar system, orbiting the Sun once every 88 days. It ranges in brightness from about −2.0 ... >
read more
Neptune Neptune is the eighth and outermost planet in our solar system. It is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third-largest by mass; Neptune is ... >
read more
Note: This page refers to an article that is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the article Charon (moon) at Wikipedia.org. See the Wikipedia copyright page for more details.
Recommend this page on Facebook, Twitter,
and Google +1:
Other bookmarking and sharing tools: