James W. Christy

James Walter Christy ( born September 15, 1938 in Milwaukee ) is an American astronomer.

In 1978 he discovered at the United States Naval Observatory, that the dwarf planet Pluto has a moon, which he named Charon. Christy had found in the evaluation of photographic plates that Pluto was " baggy ". This pointed to the existence of a moon.

In modern telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope or ground-based telescopes with adaptive optics, Pluto and Charon can be displayed separately.