Pluto landed its largest moon, Charon, with a 'kiss'—overturning decades of scientific assumptions about how planetary bodies form and evolve. This is the conclusion of a new study, conducted at ...

Here’s how it works. Charon is the largest moon of the dwarf planet Pluto, but calling it a moon is really a misnomer; Pluto and Charon actually form a binary system. Whereas a moon usually ...

“The only comparable system is Earth and its moon.” Charon is about 750 miles across, while Pluto is nearly 1,500 miles in diameter. That proportion in sizes suggests that a number of ...

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 ...

Unlike Earth, where the Moon orbits the planet, Pluto and Charon orbit each other, forming a binary system that is more similar to the Earth-moon system than any other moon in the solar system.

For decades, astronomers have tried to determine how Pluto acquired its unusually large moon Charon, which is about half the ...

Pluto and Charon’s meet-cute may have started with a kiss. New computer simulations of the dwarf planet and its largest moon suggest that the pair got together in a “kiss-and-capture ...

Pluto and Charon, however, are very different from our Earth and moon. While the moon clearly orbits Earth, Pluto and Charon orbit each other. “Charon is HUGE relative to Pluto, to the point ...

"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 ...

As part of its extensive slate of observations, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) recently took a closer look at Pluto’s moon Charon, where it helped scientists to make a surprising discovery.

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 ...

Credit: NASA/Robert Lea (created with Canva) 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 ...