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Astronomy/Appearance of Charon

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Expert: Jayendra Upadhye - 8/12/2009


Question
How large would Charon appear in the sky of Pluto, or vice versa? Degrees of arc would be a clear answer for me. Pardon me if you have already answered this question. Thank you.

Answer
Hi,
The average distance between Pluti and Charin is 19570 km.
[refer:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon_(moon)].
The radius of pluto is 1151 km.
[refer:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto].
Both are phase locked by gravitational tidal locking mechanisms.

That means we have to subtract 1151 from 19570 to get 18419 km as vieqing distance from surface of Pluto.

Radius of Charon is 603.5 km.
It will subtend anangle of 2*Tan inv(603.5/18419)= 4.75 degrees.

check:- http://www.astrosociety.org/education/publications/tnl/10/10.html
wgere it says charon is 8 times wider than our moon, in the sky of pluto.
Our moon is 0.52 degrees.
[refer:-  http://www.niquette.com/puzzles/moonills.htm].

0.52*8=4.16  which quite close to our answer.

regards
Jayen

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Jayendra Upadhye

Expertise

1 - General questions on most astronomy topics such as:- Solar system, Cosmology, Black holes, Quasars, Dark matter etc. 2 - General questions about the geologies of planets. 3 - General questions about Orbits and laws governing them. 4 - General questions about rockets / spaceships 5 - General questions about stellar interiors and supernovas.

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I was an askme.com expert rated no#1 for quite some time - and was top ten there by the time it closed - in Astronomy and general science categories.

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Bachelor of Engg. (Electrical engg), Maharaja Sayajirao university of Baroda, Gujarat, India.

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None to write about except the askme rating if it is any worth!

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