Scientists have discovered a new type of planetary collision called “kiss-and-capture,” where Pluto and proto-Charon briefly ...

Pluto may have got romantic to capture its largest moon, colliding and engaging in a passionate but icy 10 hour kiss with ...

Researchers accounted for the previously overlooked structures of the dwarf planet and moon in computer simulations of a ...

Most moons orbit their planets, but Pluto and Charon are different—they revolve around a point in space between them! 🔄 Why does this happen, and what did NASA’s New Horizons mission reveal about ...

Recent simulations link the creation of Pluto and its moon Charon to a colossal impact, akin to the Earth-Moon origin, ...

Pluto likely acquired large moon Charon in a “kiss and capture” collision billions of years ago. It may have created a subsurface ocean on the icy dwarf planet.

Charon also has an abnormally circular orbit of Pluto, with its orbital eccentricity (a value between 0 and 1, where 0 is a perfect circle and 1 is an open-ended parabola) only being about 0.000161.

As the gatekeepers to the Kuiper Belt, Charon and Pluto are a unique double dwarf planet system. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it ...

Charon is large in size relative to Pluto, and is locked in a tight orbit with the dwarf planet. A new simulation suggests how it ended up there. By Jonathan O’Callaghan Some 4.5 billion years ...

New research suggests that billions of years ago, Pluto may have captured its largest moon, Charon, with a very brief icy "kiss." The theory could explain how the dwarf planet (yeah, we wish Pluto ...

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"We were definitely surprised by the 'kiss' part of kiss-and-capture. There hasn't really been a kind of impact before where the two bodies only temporarily merge before re-separating!" New ...