Kerberos
Moon· orbits Pluto
Kerberos is a tiny, faint moon of Pluto discovered in 2011, appearing as a double-lobed body of water ice.
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Key facts
Radius
6 km
Orbit around Pluto
32.17 Earth days
Science
Physical
- Radius
- 6 km
- JPL / IAU mean radii; spacecraft-tracked GM where measured
Orbit around Pluto
- Distance from Pluto
- 58,300 km
- From JPL orbital elements
- Orbital period
- 32.2 days
- From JPL orbital elements
- Eccentricity
- 0.01
- From JPL orbital elements
- Inclination to the J2000 equator
- 0.40 °
- From JPL orbital elements
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
- 0.000788 S⊕ · 1/1,269 of the sunlight Earth receives
- Computed from the distance to the Sun (inverse-square; Earth's sunlight = 1), before any atmosphere.
- Geometric albedo
- 0.56
- Estimated geometric albedo; data limited.
- Equilibrium temperature
- 38 K (-235 °C)
- Computed from albedo + distance from the Sun (airless black body); uses the geometric albedo as an estimate
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