Moons of Pluto moons orbit Pluto at two to four times the distance of Charon, ranging from Styx at 42,700 kilometres to Hydra at 64,800 kilometres from the barycenter of the system. They have nearly circular prograde orbits in the same orbital plane as Charon. All are much smaller than Charon. Nix and Hydra, the two larger, are roughly 42 and 55 kilometers on their longest axis respectively, and Styx and Kerberos are 7 and 12 kilometers respectively. All four are irregularly shaped. The Pluto system is highly compact and largely empty. Moons could potentially orbit Pluto at up to 53% (or 69%,
Dwarf planet which made Pluto by far the smallest planet. Although it was still more than ten times as massive as the largest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres, it had one-fifth the mass of Earth's Moon. Furthermore, having some unusual characteristics, such as large orbital eccentricity and a high orbital inclination, it became evident that it was a different kind of body from any of the other planets. In the 1990s, astronomers began to find objects in the same region of space as Pluto (now known as the Kuiper belt), and some even farther away. Many of these shared several of