Charon is half the size of Pluto, “making it the largest known moon relative to its parent planet in our solar system,” NASA notes. So how did Pluto get its chonky companion? A new study ...

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 ...

Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American’s Science Quickly, I’m Rachel Feltman. Unless you’re really on the low end of our listener age bell curve, chances are you grew up learning about our ...

Kiss-and-capture could also help resolve an open question about Pluto’s temperature. Astronomers think that the planet had an underground liquid ocean for most or all of its history, but where ...

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 ...

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 ...

"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 ...

They rotate as one body until Pluto pushes Charon out into a stable orbit. "Most cosmic collisions are what we call a hit-and-run, when an impactor hits a planet and keeps going," Denton continued.

Pluto may have got romantic to capture its largest moon, colliding and engaging in a passionate but icy 10 hour kiss with Charon billions of years ago. When you purchase through links on our site ...

Previously, scientists believed that Pluto and Charon formed from a massive collision, similar to the Giant Impact Hypothesis. According to this theory, a Mars-sized planet named Theia collided ...