James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

The dance of Pluto and Charon

JWST has observed the dwarf planet Pluto on October 5, 2022 - October 11, 2022 in order to study its climate evolution, chemistry and energy balance of the atmosphere, and about the thermal and compositional properties of Pluto's and Charon's surfaces. The images were only released in the past few days since they had a 12 month exclusive period. The big dot is Pluto and the smaller one is its biggest moon, Charon. We can clearly see Charon orbiting pluto, but we can also see Pluto's position isn't "fixed" but also moving. Charon is very big compared to Pluto itself (Charon's diameter is half of Pluto's) and because of that, Pluto and Charon orbiting a common point located between them. Pluto's images (Pluto is in the top right of the images) MAST Portal Pluto and Charon orbit demonstration gif