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  1. Home
  2. Solar System
  3. Pluto
  4. Moons

Moons of Pluto

Pluto has 5 known natural satellites.

About Pluto's Moon System

Pluto has five known moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos, and Styx. Charon is by far the largest, with a diameter of 1,212 km -- more than half the diameter of Pluto itself. This makes the Pluto-Charon system the closest thing to a double dwarf planet in our solar system, as the center of gravity (barycenter) lies in space between the two bodies rather than inside Pluto. Both Pluto and Charon are tidally locked, always presenting the same face to each other. The four smaller moons -- discovered between 2005 and 2012 by the Hubble Space Telescope -- are tiny and irregularly shaped. New Horizons revealed that Nix and Hydra rotate chaotically, tumbling unpredictably due to the complex gravitational influence of the Pluto-Charon binary system.

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Explore Other Moon Systems

Earth (1)Mars (2)Jupiter (95)Saturn (146)Uranus (28)Neptune (16)
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Related Pages

Pluto Overview

Solar System

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