About Charon
Charon is an uncommon moon.
It orbits about 39.48 AU from the Sun — roughly 39.5 times Earth's distance.
Uncommon moon 30 EP
Charon
Position computed live · planets
📷 Real photo Loading sky survey…
Live ephemeris
This object moves — fetching its current position…
Score breakdown
· 3 badgesUncommon 34 pts → Rare
- Moon +16
- Has a proper name +8
- Tidally locked +6
Total score 30
4 more points to reach Rare.
Badges
- Moon · +16
- Has a proper name · +8
- Tidally locked · +6
Trivia
Hard to believe
- Round under its own weight. Big enough that its own gravity has pulled it into a sphere — most of its neighbours are potato-shaped rubble.
What it actually is
- Its address. It orbits about 39.48 AU from the Sun — roughly 39.5 times Earth's distance.
- A lopsided orbit. Its path is distinctly off-centre: it swings between 29.66 and 49.31 AU from the Sun, so its seasons are driven as much by distance as by tilt.
- Off the beaten plane. Its orbit is tilted 17° out of the flat plane the planets share — half of every lap is spent above the others, half below.
- Around its planet. It circles its planet at a distance of 19.6 thousand km — about 5% of the Earth–Moon gap — coming right round once every 6.4 days.
Sense of scale
- Against Earth. It is only 10% of Earth's width — you could pack about 1162 of it inside our planet.
- Against our Moon. Smaller than our own Moon — about 35% of its width.
- Ground to cover. Its whole surface adds up to about 4.6 million km² — about 3% of Earth's dry land.
Properties
- color
- #aaa399
- diameter km
- 1212
- name
- Charon
- named
- yes
- radius km
- 606
- tidally locked
- yes
How to see it
Like any astronomical target, Charon is best seen from a dark site away from city lights, and when it is above the horizon depends on your latitude and the time of year. Because it moves against the background stars, the live position panel on this page tracks where it is right now. The visibility panel above works out tonight's viewing window for your saved location.
Why Charon is an uncommon moon
Charon scores 30 points on Spacedle's rarity scale, which places it in the uncommon tier. Another 4 points would lift it into a rarer tier.
That score comes from 3 science badges — Moon, Has a proper name and Tidally locked — each earned for a real, measurable property of the object. Rarity on Spacedle is never random: the more remarkable an object's astrophysics, the more badges it collects, the higher it scores, and the rarer it ranks.