Feb. 18 marks the 95th anniversary of the discovery of our outermost planet-not-planet. Here's what to know about the short ...

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 ...

In fact, Charon is so large compared to its host world that it and Pluto actually orbit a common center of mass (or "barycenter") that is outside the surface of Pluto itself. This peculiar mass ...

Charon then began migrating slowly outward to its current near-circular orbit around Pluto. Phys.org reported that this relationship is an example of how gravitational interactions can generate ...

But with its peculiar, tilted orbit and confoundingly small size ... Scientists are hoping to use the craters dotting Pluto’s and Charon’s surfaces to take a survey of the Kuiper belt ...

end up putting it in the right orbit. You get two things right for the price of one," said Erik Asphaug, senior study author. The "kiss and capture" scenario suggests that Pluto and Charon ...

Scientists suggest that 4.5 billion years ago, Pluto and Charon experienced a "kiss and capture" event, where they collided gently before Charon was trapped in orbit around Pluto. This finding ...

The fact Pluto's orbital axis is more or less perfectly aligned with Charon's highly suggests they were both spun out of the same rotating mess following a collision, but the size and orbit of ...

Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930 at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff. Here's how Pluto won - and lost - its planetary status.

Jan. 7, 2025 — 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 ...