"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!" ...

The report, published in “Nature Geoscience,” describes how the minuscule dwarf planet could lure in Charon, a space rock nearly half its size, to orbit. The authors suggest that Pluto and ...

In the wake of this colossal impact, the colliding bodies behaved like fluids, with the moon forming out of the molten debris which had been ejected into space. "Pluto and Charon are different ...

Whereas a moon usually orbits a planet, both Pluto and Charon orbit a point in space between them — their common center of mass. The other four moons in the system — Styx, Nix, Kerberos and ...

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

When astronomers found a large world farther out than Pluto, it became one of the final nails in the coffin of our ninth ...

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Amanda Kooser covers the quirky side of science and space. Pluto has five moons, but Charon stands out from the rest. Charon is half the ...

Pluto can indeed capture Charon from a giant impact," team leader and University of Arizona lunar and planetary researcher Adeene Denton told Space.com. "The process of this collisional capture is ...