Charon (moon) Charon (moon) Charon, also known as (134340) Pluto I, is the largest of the five known natural satellites of the dwarf planet Pluto. It has a mean radius of 606 km. It was discovered in 1978 at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., using photographic plates taken at the United States Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station (NOFS). With half the diameter and one eighth the mass of Pluto, Charon is a very large moon in comparison to its parent body. Its gravitational influence is such that the barycenter of the Plutonian system lies outside Pluto. The reddish-brown cap of
Dwarf planet list of hundreds of candidate objects, ranging from "nearly certain" to "possible" dwarf planets."" As of Feb 2018, Brown's list includes 952 objects, identifying ten known trans-Neptunian objects—the four accepted by the IAU plus the six bodies: , , , , and —as "near certain", with another 26 "highly likely". Notably, (1535 km) has a larger diameter than the dwarf planet Makemake (1430 km). Stern states that there are more than a dozen known dwarf planets. Only two of these bodies, Ceres and Pluto, have been observed in enough detail to demonstrate that they actually fit the IAU's definition. The