When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: NASA/Robert Lea (created with Canva) New research suggests that billions of years ago, ...

The first color movies from NASA’s New Horizons mission show Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, and the complex orbital dance of the two bodies, known as a double planet. “It’s exciting to see Pluto ...

They’re a fascinating pair: Two icy worlds, spinning around their common center of gravity like a pair of figure skaters clasping hands. Scientists believe they were shaped by a cosmic collision ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A composite of enhanced color images of Pluto and Charon taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft ...

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” collision, where ...

New research suggests that Pluto may have acquired its most massive moon, Charon, through an ancient grazing impact, which the science team refers to as a “kiss and capture”. The study uses computer ...

For billions of years, Pluto and its largest moon Charon have been facing each other in a mutual tidal lock. Since it’s about half the size of Pluto, the moon and its planet are sometimes referred to ...

Charon is large in size relative to Pluto, and is locked in a tight orbit with the dwarf planet. A new simulation suggests how it ended up there. By Jonathan O’Callaghan Some 4.5 billion years ago, ...

The “demoted” dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon make an unusual pair, and for decades, scientists have been discussing how the binary system—in which each mutually orbits the other—came ...

Here are the first images as they come in. Look at all this good stuff. I only wish they'd shared more. Charon has surprisingly few craters and a globe-crossing system of canyons bigger than Earth's ...

Pluto may have been demoted to non-planet status, but it still commands a court of five moons, as is fitting for the king of darkness; after all, Pluto is the Roman equivalent of the Greek God Hades.

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 was ...