Moons of Pluto while searching for Plutonian rings. Styx, announced on 7 July 2012, was discovered while looking for potential hazards for "New Horizons". Charon is about half the diameter of Pluto and is so massive (nearly one eighth of the mass of Pluto) that the system's barycenter lies between them, approximately 960 km above Pluto's surface. Charon and Pluto are also tidally locked, so that they always present the same face toward each other. The IAU General Assembly in August 2006 considered a proposal that Pluto and Charon be reclassified as a double planet, but the proposal was abandoned. Pluto's four small
IAU definition of planet Pluto would have been the prototype for this class. The term "dwarf planet" would have been available to describe all planets smaller than the eight "classical planets" in orbit around the Sun, though would not have been an official IAU classification. The IAU did not make recommendations in the draft resolution on what separated a planet from a brown dwarf. A vote on the proposal was scheduled for August 24, 2006. Such a definition of the term "planet" could also have led to changes in classification for the trans-Neptunian objects , , Sedna, Orcus, Quaoar, Varuna, , Ixion, and ,