Where is Kubrick Mons on Charon?
Kubrick Mons is centered at 3.6° north, 30.8° east, on Vulcan Planitia, the smooth, lower plains that fill the southern half of the hemisphere New Horizons saw up close, just south of the belt of canyons that holds Serenity Chasma. Clarke Montes, the other mountains in a moat, stand about 24 degrees of longitude to the west. NASA's flyover of Charon calls it the "moat mountain"; the International Astronomical Union adopted Kubrick Mons in 2018, after Stanley Kubrick.
How high is Kubrick Mons?
Up to about 4 kilometers above its moat. The New Horizons team found that it rises abruptly from the plains and stands 2.5 to 3 kilometers above them, but 3.7 to 4 kilometers above the depressed moat that surrounds it. How it formed is not settled: one idea is that it is a block of Charon's broken crust that sank into the material that flooded the plains, pressing the moat into it around itself.
What does Kubrick Mons look like as a 3D print?
One peak in a trench. Its entry frames about 159 kilometers, the smallest region Charon allows, so on a model 200 millimeters across the relief in that view comes out at about 7 millimeters at true scale and about 14 millimeters at the 2x Charon models start at. The mountain, 40 kilometers across, is about 50 millimeters wide on the model, its moat a groove around it. The south-eastern corner of the view, about a seventh of it, lies in a smoother band that New Horizons saw only at a grazing angle, and a faint north-south line, where two strips of New Horizons images meet, can show at 2x. Ground as sharp as the mountain itself is only about a fifth of Charon; the north polar cap, for one, prints as streaks.
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.
Other landmarks
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.