APOD: 2026 June 6 – Charon: Moon of Pluto
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2026 June 6
Charon: Moon of Pluto
Image Credit:
NASA,
Johns Hopkins Univ./APL,
Southwest Research Institute,
U.S. Naval Observatory
Explanation:
A darkened and mysterious north polar region
known to some as
Mordor Macula caps this premier view
of Charon, Pluto’s largest moon.
The high-resolution image
was captured by the
interplanetary space probe
New Horizons
near its closest approach to distant Pluto on July 14, 2015.
The combined blue, red, and infrared
image data was processed to enhance colors
and follow variations in Charon’s surface properties
with a resolution of about 2.9 kilometers (1.8 miles).
A stunning image of Charon’s Pluto-facing hemisphere, it also
features a clear view of an apparently moon-girdling belt of
fractures and canyons that seems to
separate smooth southern plains from varied northern terrain.
Charon is 1,214 kilometers (754 miles) across.
That’s about 1/10th the size of planet Earth
but a whopping 1/2 the diameter of
Pluto itself,
and makes it the largest satellite relative to its
parent body in the Solar System.
Still, the moon appears as a small bump at about the 1 o’clock position
on Pluto’s disk in the grainy, negative, telescopic picture inset
at upper left.
That image was used by James Christy and Robert Harrington
at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff to
discover Charon in June of 1978.
Tomorrow’s picture: Jupiter and Venus from Earth
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Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Amber Straughn
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