Facts about Charon

1. 08

   Two massive cryovolcanic domes rise from Charon's equatorial region, each approximately 6 kilometers tall and several hundred kilometers wide, suggesting water-ammonia mixtures erupted from the moon's interior within the past billion years.

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2. 07

   At 1,212 kilometers in diameter, Charon is roughly half the size of Earth's Moon despite being a satellite of a dwarf planet.

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3. 06

   Charon's nitrogen ice deposits, discovered by New Horizons in 2015, concentrate near its south pole in a region called Mordor Macula, suggesting seasonal frost migration across the moon's surface.

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4. 05

   Discovered in 1978 by astronomer James Christy, Charon remained the only known moon of Pluto for 36 years until New Horizons confirmed four smaller moons orbiting the dwarf planet system.

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5. 04

   Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to each other, completing one mutual orbit every 6.4 Earth days while always showing the same face to one another.

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6. 03

   Charon's surface temperature reaches only minus 223 degrees Celsius, making it one of the coldest known objects in the solar system.

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7. 02

   In 2015, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft revealed that Charon possesses a massive canyon system stretching 1,600 kilometers long and 7.5 kilometers deep across its surface.

   CharonMay 14sharegeologyspacemeasurement
8. 01

   Nearly half of Pluto's mass exists in its largest moon Charon, which orbits just 19,591 kilometers away, closer than Earth's Moon relative to planetary size.

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