Talk:Charon (moon)

"The reddish-brown cap of the north pole of Charon is composed of tholins, organic macromolecules that may be essential ingredients of life."
Why does it have to be stated that these are essential for life? This topic isn't discussed further in the article. As such, it is quite an abrupt ending to the sentence. It does not feel relevant to what is being discussed and more like somebody trying to stir up fun-facts for people reading Wikipedia articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Limitlez1 (talk • contribs) 02:23, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree. It is far, far too cold out there for life to evolve as we understand it, so these are just frozen organic compounds.50.111.29.1 (talk) 15:25, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Charonian, not Charontian
User recently changed all occurrences of "Charonian" to "Charontian". Affected articles were:
 * renamed: List of Charonian craters, Dorothy (Charonian crater)
 * modified: List of adjectivals and demonyms of astronomical bodies, List of geological features on Charon, Moons of Pluto, Charon (moon)

This change is completely unjustified. There are many uses of Charonian on the internet and in books identified by the Google Books ngram server. There are no uses of Charontian. Most dictionaries don't include either form, but a few ([Collins], [dictionary.com]) do include Charonian. None include Charontian.

All I can think is that this is an attempt to change which word people use, which is absolutely not what Wikipedia is for. Unless I hear a compelling argument against, I'll revert all of these changes tomorrow night. Dan Bloch (talk) 04:21, 27 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I was wondering why we weren't using the international form. (The usual Latin oblique stem is Charont-, Italian and Spanish have Charonte as their form, etc.) Checking Google Books, there didn't appear to be any reason to prefer one over the other. If 'Charonian' really is the usual form in English, then of course we should go back to that. I'll try checking the OED tomorrow.
 * (BTW, I removed the redirects from your list of renamed "affected articles", since they're not articles and we presumably want redirects from whichever form we don't use.) — kwami (talk) 05:23, 27 April 2022 (UTC)


 * To give the sources for the results I gave descriptively above, Google books in fact shows an overwhelming preference for Charonian . Note that the second line on that graph is for Charonic, not Charontian.  There are no matches (meaning fewer than 40 found in the sources) for Charontian.  Google search shows 45,000 matches for Charonian and 15 for Charontian . Dan Bloch (talk) 03:30, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Ngrams certainly gives support to your argument. But raw Google search numbers are meaningless, as are web searches. For example, of the "about 45,800 results" Google reports, only 111 are actual hits, and many of those are mirrors or other duplicates, or don't contain the word at all. (In one case I picked at random, a website selling prednisone.) This is why we usually go by confirmed hits in Gbooks or something similar, which is what I had checked. — kwami (talk) 05:16, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I wasn't aware that Google result counts were fictitious. But even with the manually checked results, Google search shows the use of Charonian exceeding Charnotian by a factor of at least seven to one.  Google Scholar as well shows 163 results for Charonian, at least half of them legitimate, and no results for Charontian .  At the end of the day, there is no support for the use of Charontian anywhere.  I'm going to switch this back. Dan Bloch (talk) 20:41, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
 * There's about even support for 'Charontian' on Gbooks, but the numbers are so low they don't mean much. — kwami (talk) 07:00, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

tidally locked with Pluto
I think we should add the fact Charon is tidally locked with Pluto into the lead, its one of the more notable features about the satellite. MaximusEditor (talk) 16:40, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Sure, sounds good. Go for it. Dan Bloch (talk) 00:03, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * There's nothing remarkable about that. All medium-large moons in the Solar system are in synchronous orbits. What's remarkable about Pluto-Charon is that they're both tidally locked. — kwami (talk) 12:02, 7 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I like that, we should add that in just how you said it. MaximusEditor (talk) 02:41, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Are there any models that state how long this took to occur, and when it might have happened? HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:10, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

pluto has a "significant" atmosphere?
That passage already has been tagged, but the pressure at the height of the summer must be a virtual vacuum - is this an astro-physics definition of "significant"? HammerFilmFan (talk) 22:14, 31 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Pluto has enough of an atmosphere that there are haze layers and wind deposits that alter the landscape. IMO that's significant. We might say "thin but significant." Considering that we speak of the "atmosphere" of Luna, which IMO has no atmosphere at all, Pluto's is certainly significant in comparison. (IMO an atmosphere is a gaseous layer, and there is no layer of gas on the Moon, ergo no atmosphere, just what we call an exosphere, but that's debatable.) — kwami (talk) 23:42, 31 October 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree with . (Though now I'm curious: would you count Io?) Double sharp (talk) 11:58, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I copyedited the text. It now says "thin but significant". Dan Bloch (talk) 15:21, 1 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Io's is marginal from what I can tell. It's due to gaseous emissions from the surface, and would quickly disappear without those sources. It does appear to have some effect on the distribution of surface deposits, but 'significant' would seem to be an overstatement IMO. The fact that it's localized, with its density depending on what's underneath, means that it's not a 'sphere' at all. If we define an exosphere as not being a true atmosphere, then I'd say that Io has hardly any atmosphere at all. — kwami (talk) 18:59, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Christy's account of the name
Christy wrote the forward to Clyde Tombaugh & ‎Patrick Moore (2008) Out of the Darkness: The Planet Pluto. On p. 12 he writes,
 * During the move, I frequently thought about a name for the new moon. Although my early favorites were Oz, from The Wizard of Oz, and Charon, after my wife, Charlene&mdash;Char to her family; I soon learned that the astronomical community expected the name to be taken from Greek mythology and to be associated with the god Pluto. But serendipity struck again, and I made my third discovery of the week as I opened my dictionary and read, "Charon&mdash;in Greek mythology, the boatman who ferried dead souls across the river Styx to Hades, the domain of Pluto." So be it; ours is not to reason why&mdash;at least not immediately. Charlene and I were delighted with Charon; despite his somewhat grizzly reputation, he appeared to be doing essential work. Several months later, Bob and Betty Harrington named their daughter Ann Charon Harrington, so part of this story is just beginning.

— kwami (talk) 23:08, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

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