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Mind your language

Pluto’s moon Charon is secretly a Charlene

(And that’s why some astronomers pronounce it with a soft ‘sh’, not a hard ‘ch’)

25 July 2015

9:00 AM

25 July 2015

9:00 AM

‘What about the moon Tracey?’ asked my husband facetiously when an astronomer on the wireless, talking of Pluto’s moon Charon, pronounced it ‘Sharon’. As usual, things turn out not to be so simple as my husband’s understanding of them.

Everyone knows that Pluto was named in 1930 by an 11-year-old girl, Venetia Burney.

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