Watch Pluto and Charon Engage in Their Orbital Dance

universetoday.com ^ | August 7, 2014 | Jason Major

[BenLurkin]

Now here’s something I guarantee you’ve never seen before: a video of the dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon showing the two distinctly separate worlds actually in motion around each other! Captured by the steadily-approaching New Horizons spacecraft from July 19–24, the 12 images that comprise this animation were acquired with the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) instrument from distances of 267 million to 262 million miles (429 million to 422 million km) and show nearly a full orbital rotation.

... Pluto and Charon are seen circling a central gravitational point known as the barycenter, which accounts for the wobbling motion. Since Charon is 1/12th the mass of Pluto the center of mass between the two actually lies a bit outside Pluto’s radius, making their little gravitational “dance” readily apparent.

(The same effect happens with the Earth and Moon too, but since the barycenter lies 1,700 km below Earth’s surface it’s not nearly as obvious.)

[BenLurkin]

Animation of Pluto and Charon showing nearly a full rotation

Pluto and Charon rotation movie from New Horizons (enlarged view)

[BenLurkin]

Of possible interest

[Slings and Arrows]

Pluto and Charon are seen circling a central gravitational point known as the barycenter

Can't be - Barry only thinks that the world revolves around him.

[GeronL]

I had a story once about two habitable worlds that shared an orbit like that

[cripplecreek]

Looking forward to getting a good look at Pluto next July.

In July of 2016 Juno will be inserted into orbit around Jupiter.

[Empireoftheatom48]

Very cool!

[mikrofon]

Pluto and Charon are seen circling a central gravitational point known as the barycenter, which accounts for the wobbling motion

True, only in Washington, DC it's spelled Barrycenter ... And you will find a lot of dancing & wobbling going on there as well.

[cripplecreek]

All orbiting bodies have a barycenter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_coordinates_%28astronomy%29

[Slings and Arrows]

:) I thought DC was a black hole.

[GeronL]

Unfortunately our Barry Center is DC

[2nd Amendment]

I think it was wrong to vote Pluto out of the Solar System.. What if someone voted Earth out?

[centurion316]

Pluto’s papers were found not to be in order. Without proper papers, you simply can’t be a planet. Someone will have to declare an amnesty for Pluto to get in now.

[TangoLimaSierra]

Gravity tool

I've posted this before but it is cool.

[Cyman]

So Juno is going to slam on the brakes, do a 180 and head back to Jupiter? Pretty cool!

[cripplecreek]

I’m assuming not but the Jupiter Orbit Insertion is on July 5, 2016.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html#.U-VXbGNPaMF

[Salamander]

Don’t pay the ferryman.....ping.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks BenLurkin, extra to APoD. Chose this clip because I figure that someone will bring up a myth otherwise:

Since Charon is 1/12th the mass of Pluto the center of mass between the two actually lies a bit outside Pluto’s radius, making their little gravitational “dance” readily apparent. (The same effect happens with the Earth and Moon too, but since the barycenter lies 1,700 km below Earth’s surface it’s not nearly as obvious.)

[cripplecreek]

You can get real technical and explain where the barycenter of our solar system is as the planets orbit in different places at different speeds.

We’ll wait. :-I

[SunkenCiv]

Hey, why break a sweat when it’s been done to death. :’)

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/solarsystem_barycenter.pdf

> The barycenter is often outside the photosphere of the Sun, but never outside the Sun’s corona.

http://www.orbitsimulator.com/gravity/simulations/ssbarycenter.gsim

[ELS]

Cool!