Recent scientific modeling has proposed a fascinating theory about how Pluto captured its largest moon, Charon. The theory suggests a novel “kiss and capture” event, where the two celestial bodies ...

If you lived on one of Pluto’s moons Nix or Hydra, you’d have a hard time setting your alarm clock. That’s because you could not know for sure when, or even in which direction, the sun would rise. A ...

In a teleconference today, astronomy professor Douglas Hamilton cracked that the “dwarf” in Pluto’s title of “dwarf planet” should be seen as an honorific. After all, we have eight planets already; ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Amanda Kooser covers the quirky side of science and space. Pluto has five moons, but Charon stands out from the rest. Charon is ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Credit: NASA/Robert Lea (created with Canva) New research suggests that billions of years ago, Pluto may have captured its largest ...

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 believe ...

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, ...

In the Feb. 23 issue of the journal Nature, a team led by Dr. Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., describes its discovery of two new moons ...

Image taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows five moons orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto.NASA / ESA Back in the 1980’s, a now-defunct magazine called Science Digest held a contest ...