How many known moons does Pluto have?

Pluto’s Posse: A Peek at the Dwarf Planet’s Moons

Okay, so Pluto might not be a “real” planet anymore, but that doesn’t make it any less cool. This little dwarf planet hanging out in the Kuiper Belt has a whole entourage of moons! So, how many moons are we talking about? Pluto’s got five of them i.

Yep, five! There’s Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra i. Now, Charon is a big deal – seriously, it’s almost half the size of Pluto itself i. They’re so close in size that some astronomers even call Pluto and Charon a binary system i. I mean, they basically waltz around a point in space between them, which is pretty wild when you think about it i.

Let’s break down the moon crew a little more:

• Charon: This is the head honcho of Pluto’s moons, discovered way back in 1978 i. What’s super interesting is that Charon is tidally locked with Pluto i. Imagine that – they always show the same face to each other, like they’re stuck in a cosmic staring contest i.
• Styx: The baby of the bunch, Styx is the tiniest moon Pluto has i. We didn’t even know it existed until 2012, when the Hubble Space Telescope spotted it i.
• Nix: Nix, discovered in 2005 along with Hydra, is another one of those smaller moons orbiting Pluto i.
• Kerberos: This moon was discovered in 2011, also with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope i.
• Hydra: Out there, the farthest moon from Pluto, is Hydra i. It was discovered at the same time as Nix, back in 2005 i.

Here’s a fun fact: all of Pluto’s moons are named after figures from mythology related to the underworld i. Makes sense, right? Pluto is named after the Roman god of the underworld i. The current thinking is that this whole moon system probably came about after Pluto smacked into another object in the Kuiper Belt way back when the solar system was just a baby i. All that debris floating around eventually clumped together to form the moons we see today i. And get this – the smaller moons (Hydra, Kerberos, Nix, and Styx) are in this crazy orbital resonance i. Basically, their orbits are linked mathematically, which is just mind-blowing i.

We really got the best look at Pluto and its moons in July 2015, when the New Horizons spacecraft zipped past i. The data and images we got back were incredible, giving us a much clearer picture of these distant, icy worlds i. It just goes to show, even though Pluto’s not a planet, it’s still full of surprises!