3D print Charon

How do you turn a region of Charon into an STL?

Open the generator, switch it to Charon, pick a landmark from the list or drag the selection box over any other measured region, and choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament in a circle, square or hexagon. OrbitStudio builds the model from the elevation data and shows it in 3D before you download anything, with the terrain and the frame already separated and colored. Charon models start at 2x vertical exaggeration: at true scale a region a few hundred kilometers across has only a few millimeters of relief on a model 200 mm wide.

Generating a model and turning it around in 3D is free and needs no account. A free account adds puzzle slicing, custom frame text and a library of three models. Downloading the STL and pre-colored 3MF files takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The frame text, the puzzle cover and the wall mount work on Charon as they do on the other worlds.

How much of Charon can be printed?

Only the part New Horizons measured. The spacecraft photographed Charon just before its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015, and saw one hemisphere of it up close. The New Horizons team built elevation models of about 40% of Charon from its stereo images; counted on the published file, the measured ground is about 44% of the surface. The rest was seen only from far away or lay in darkness, so it has no heights, and the generator will not build a selection that touches it. On the map that ground is shaded, and on the globe it is dark.

Less than half of the measured part is sharp: about 20% of Charon, the belt of canyons north of the equator and the plains, mountains and craters around it, roughly from 64° W to 76° E. Around that the heights are softer. The north polar cap carries east-west streaks, the ground north-west of the canyons comes out dimpled, west of 64° W it is blurred, and a band in the south-east is smooth, filled in between profiles of Charon's edge. Those areas can still be printed, softer, and the generator says so when a quarter or more of a selection lies in one.

How much relief does Charon have?

A great deal for a moon 1,214 kilometers across. Schenk et al. measured about 19 kilometers from the lowest point to the highest on the side New Horizons saw, the most of any mid-sized icy moon but Iapetus. The deepest ground lies in the troughs near the north pole, the highest on the tilted blocks along the edge of the canyon belt: the walls of Serenity Chasma, informally named, drop more than 6 kilometers in places. Dorothy, the largest crater, is about 6 kilometers deep, and Kubrick Mons and Clarke Montes stand 3.7 to 4 kilometers above the moats around them. In the published file the heights run from 14,133 meters below to 6,911 meters above the 606-kilometer sphere they are measured from; the lowest point is in a trough of the north polar cap, the highest on the rim of Serenity Chasma.

Which regions of Charon print best?

The canyons and the mountains south of them, at 2x. The file is posted at 300 meters per pixel, but below about 150 kilometers the stereo prints as soft blobs, so a region on Charon is at least about 159 kilometers across, which is what the entries for Clarke Montes and Kubrick Mons frame. Framed at about 250 kilometers, Serenity Chasma comes out with about 7 mm of relief at 1x and 14 mm at 2x on a model 200 mm across, a deep trench between broken blocks. The mountains in their moats print the same way.

The north polar cap does not print well. Neverland Regio, the dark red region around the north pole known informally as Mordor Macula, was seen only from far away, and its heights print as streaks; Butler Mons, a mountain in the smooth south-eastern band, is missing from the elevation data altogether. Charon models carry no credit condition: the elevation data is NASA mission data, which NASA releases under Creative Commons Zero, as section 08 of the terms explains.

Is the map a photograph of Charon?

Not one photograph. The map and the globe show New Horizons' global mosaic of Charon, assembled from nearly all of the sharpest images the spacecraft took with its two cameras, LORRI and MVIC, in shades of gray. The side New Horizons never saw up close is blurred or missing. On both, the ground that was never measured is shaded dark, because it cannot be printed. The map can also show shaded maps of the heights.

Has anything landed on Charon?

No. New Horizons flew past and kept going, so there are no landing sites to mark, and Charon models carry no markers.

Which Charon landmarks are built in?

Twelve, in four groups: two canyons, two mountains, six craters, and two plains and highlands. Nine are names the IAU has approved, eight of them in 2018. Three are names the New Horizons team uses that the IAU has not approved, and they are marked as informal: Serenity Chasma, Oz Terra and Vulcan Planitia. Every box lies on the sharp part of the measured ground; where a feature runs off it, as Mandjet Chasma and Dorothy do, its box frames the sharp part. Neverland Regio (informally Mordor Macula), named by the IAU in 2026, was seen only from far away and prints as streaks, so it is not on the list. Each one below opens the generator on Charon, already flown to it.

Canyons

Mountains

Craters

Plains and highlands

What is OrbitStudio?

OrbitStudio turns real elevation data into 3D-printable models. You pick a region of Charon on a globe or a flat map, choose a jigsaw puzzle or a solid ornament, and get ready-to-print files with terrain and borders already separated and colored. No CAD, no mesh repair. The heights come from New Horizons' stereo topography, posted at 300 meters per pixel.

Trying it is free and needs no account: pick a region, generate it and turn it around in 3D. Downloading the model — STL files and pre-colored 3MF files for Bambu Studio or OrcaSlicer — takes a Plus or Merchant plan, or one credit from a pass. The generator covers the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus and Pluto too.

The night sky, too

OrbitStudio Sky, the night-sky tool, turns the sky over any place, on any date from 1900 to 2100, into a 3D-printable star map. Its STL is free.