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

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

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

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

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 ...

Pluto landed its largest moon, Charon, with a 'kiss'—overturning decades ... work to capture Charon end up putting it in the right orbit," wrote paper author and University of Arizona planetary ...

Pluto and its moon Charon may have been briefly locked together in a cosmic “kiss”, before the dwarf planet released the smaller body and recaptured it in its orbit. Charon is the largest of ...

University of Arizona researchers have unveiled evidence of romance at the farthest reaches of the solar system: a cosmic ...

And the new research may offer evidence for a subsurface ocean beneath Pluto’s icy crust. Charon and Earth’s moon are both a large fraction of the size of the main body they orbit, which is ...

"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 ...

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.