and 2005 placed an upper limit to Huya's diameter at , based on a minimum albedo around 0.08. Early estimates for Huya's diameter were calculated from its apparently high absolute magnitude (brightness), was later discovered to be the combination of the brightnesses of the primary body (Huya) and its large satellite, whose existence was unknown until its discovery in 2012. By subtracting the satellite's effects from Huya's brightness, astronomers were able to approximate Huya's true diameter. Huya's mean diameter is estimated at , based on measurements of Huya's thermal emission by the Herschel Space Observatory in 2013. Compared to Pluto and its moon Charon, Huya is approximately one-sixth the diameter of Pluto and one-third the diameter of Charon. On 18 March 2019, Huya occulted a bright 10.6-magnitude star, briefly dimming the star as Huya passed in front of it. The stellar occultation was observed by astronomers across central Europe and Asia and was detected by 21 telescopes at 18 observation sites in the region. Successful detections of the occultation yielded 14 chords from Romania, three chords from Turkey, and three chords from Israel. Huya was shown to have an oblate shape, based on a best-fit elliptical model constructed from the chords obtained from the occultation, with a best fit projected ellipse of by at the time of the occultation. Assuming that Huya is a Maclaurin spheroid, it would be approximately 435 by 435 by 233 km in size, with a density of about . No signs of a possible atmosphere or rings were detected during the occultation, with strong constraints put on the amount of debris in the vicinity of Huya. Rings with a width smaller than 0.1 km, or an opacity of less than 50 percent, remain possible. Possible dwarf planet status Huya was considered to be a possible dwarf planet due to its presumed high brightness, which corresponds to a large diameter. Astronomer Gonzalo Tancredi considered Huya as a possible dwarf planet with an estimated diameter larger than , the suggested minimum size for icy objects to maintain a spheroidal shape. However, later measurements of Huya's diameter yielded smaller size estimates, casting doubt on this possibility. Adopting Herschel's mean diameter estimate of , Huya is slightly larger than Saturn's moon Mimas, which is ellipsoidal in shape, and slightly smaller than Neptune's moon Proteus, which is irregular in shape. In 2019, William Grundy and colleagues proposed that trans-Neptunian objects