"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!" ...

Summer 2015 was marked by a unique astronomical event, which occurs approximately once in ... the history of astronomy. The ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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 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.

This composite image of Pluto, right, and Charon, its largest moon, showcases photos captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI Unlike how scientists ...