"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 ...

Scientists have discovered a new type of planetary collision called “kiss-and-capture,” where Pluto and proto-Charon briefly ...

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 ...

Charon also has an abnormally circular orbit of Pluto, with its orbital eccentricity (a value between 0 and 1, where 0 is a perfect circle and 1 is an open-ended parabola) only being about 0.000161.

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...