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Pluto-Charon perihelion

For 20 years (or 8%) of its 248-year orbit around the Sun, the dwarf planet Pluto is slightly closer to the Sun than Neptune.  But even here at its perihelion, light from the Sun still takes 4 hours, 6 minutes to reach Pluto.
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At the scale of this solar system diagram, the diameter of Pluto is about the same as two grains of salt.  Its largest moon, Charon, is about the size of a single grain of salt, at a distance of only about 3 millimeters from Pluto.  But technically, Charon does not orbit Pluto.  Rather, Pluto and Charon orbit each other around a common barycenter (or center of mass) which lies between the two objects.  For this reason, some astronomers classify Pluto and Charon as a binary system.  The only close-up images of Pluto and its five known moons were taken by the New Horizons spacecraft, during its 2015 flyby.

You can view these links to learn more about the Pluto-Charon system:
  • Pluto (NASA)
  • Pluto (Wikipedia)

The Pluto-Charon image on this page is a montage of photos taken in 2015 by the New Horizons probe, and is courtesy of NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute.

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  • Home
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    • Portable
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    • Mercury demo
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