New research suggests that Pluto may have acquired its most massive moon, Charon, through an ancient grazing impact, which the science team refers to as a “kiss and capture”. The study uses computer ...

Using advanced models, SwRI led new research that indicates that the formation of Pluto and Charon may parallel that of the Earth-Moon system. In the resulting “kiss-and-capture” regime, Pluto and ...

The love story between Pluto and Charon may have started with a kiss. A new study suggests the dwarf planet and its scarcely smaller moon likely came together in a collision that saw them conjoined ...

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The “demoted” dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon make an unusual pair, and for decades, scientists have been discussing how the binary system—in which each mutually orbits the other—came ...

How did Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, form? This is what a recent study published in Nature Geoscience hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by the University of Arizona ...

Billions of years ago, in the frozen edges of the solar system, a violent impact shaped one of space’s oddest pairs. Instead of a typical planet-moon setup, Pluto and Charon became a binary system.

For billions of years, Pluto and its largest moon Charon have been facing each other in a mutual tidal lock. Since it’s about half the size of Pluto, the moon and its planet are sometimes referred to ...

Pluto and Charon don’t behave like a typical planet and moon system. Instead of Charon orbiting inside Pluto’s body, both objects orbit a point in space between them called the barycenter. That’s why ...

Astronomers have detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on the frozen surface of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. These discoveries add to ...

A researcher has used advanced models that indicate that the formation of Pluto and Charon may parallel that of the Earth-Moon system. Both systems include a moon that is a large fraction of the size ...