Kerberos
Moon· orbits Pluto
Kerberos is a tiny, faint moon of Pluto discovered in 2011, appearing as a double-lobed body of water ice.
Open in 3D viewSee Kerberos in the live, interactive 3D map
Key facts
Radius
6 km
Orbit around Pluto
32.17 Earth days
Science
Physical
- Radius
- 6 km
Orbit around Pluto
- Distance from Pluto
- 86,103 km
- Orbital period
- 32.2 days
- Eccentricity
- 0.01
- Inclination
- 0.40 °
Rotation
- Rotation
- Chaotic — non-synchronous, tumbling with no fixed period like Pluto's other small moons (Showalter & Hamilton 2015). Not tidally locked.
Composition
- Bulk composition
- A small body with a bright water-ice surface; details are limited.
Radiation & temperature
- Insolation
- 0.00079 S⊕ · 1/1,266 of the sunlight Earth receives
- Geometric albedo
- 0.56
- Equilibrium temperature
- 38 K (-235 °C)
Discovery & history
- By
- the Hubble Space Telescope (Mark Showalter and colleagues)
- Method
- Photographic plates
- Name
- Kerberos (Cerberus), the many-headed dog that guards the gate of the underworld in Greek myth.
Kerberos was discovered in Hubble images in 2011, the fourth of Pluto's moons to be found. Small and dark, it has a curious double-lobed shape, as though two smaller bodies had merged. Almost nothing else is known about it.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image