Styx
Moon· orbits Pluto
Styx is the smallest and faintest known moon of Pluto, an irregular sliver of ice discovered in 2012.
Open in 3D viewSee Styx in the live, interactive 3D map
Key facts
Radius
5.2 km
Orbit around Pluto
20.16 Earth days
Science
Physical
- Radius
- 5.2 km
Orbit around Pluto
- Distance from Pluto
- 77,071 km
- Orbital period
- 20.2 days
- Eccentricity
- 0.025
- Inclination
- 0.00 °
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 tiny, irregular icy body; very little is known about it.
Radiation & temperature
- Insolation
- 0.00079 S⊕ · 1/1,266 of the sunlight Earth receives
- Geometric albedo
- 0.50
- Equilibrium temperature
- 39 K (-234 °C)
Discovery & history
- By
- the Hubble Space Telescope (Mark Showalter and colleagues)
- Method
- Photographic plates
- Name
- Styx, the goddess and river that bounds the underworld in Greek myth.
Styx, found in Hubble images in 2012, is the smallest and faintest of Pluto's five known moons. Like its siblings it orbits the Pluto–Charon pair in near-resonance and tumbles chaotically. Beyond its discovery, essentially nothing is known about it.
Images
Images from open archives · credit shown per image