Moon Charon tagged posts

Charon (top) and Pluto are only separated by 12,000 or so miles. When Charon is positioned between the sun and Pluto, Georgia Tech research indicates that the moon can significantly reduce atmospheric loss  Credit: NASA-JHUAPL-SwRI

Pluto’s relationship with its moon Charon is one of the more unusual interactions in the solar system due to Charon’s size and proximity. It’s more than half of Pluto’s diameter and orbits only 12,000 or so miles away. To put that into perspective, picture our moon three times closer to Earth, and as large as Mars. A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology provides additional insight into this relationship and how it affects the continuous stripping of Pluto’s atmosphere by solar wind...

A close-up of the canyons on Charon, Pluto’s big moon, taken by New Horizons during its close approach to the Pluto system last July. Multiple views taken by New Horizons as it passed by Charon allow stereo measurements of topography, shown in the color-coded version of the image. The scale bar indicates relative elevation. Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Pluto’s largest moon may have gotten too big for its own skin. Images from NASA’s New Horizons mission suggest Pluto’s moon Charon once had a subsurface ocean that has long since frozen and expanded, pushing outward and causing the moon’s surface to stretch and fracture on a massive scale...