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.

The gas giants outside our solar system are not capable of hosting extraterrestrial life, but do offer clues in a lingering ...

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 was always in a tough spot when it came to being a planet. Just 1,477 miles across, it's only one-fifth the diameter of Earth. It did have five known moons: Charon, Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and ...

Astro Brief is a collaboration between KSMU, the Missouri Space Grant, and MSU's Department of Physics, Astronomy and ...

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The controversy endures over Pluto's true status, but the solar system underdog continues to capture hearts across the globe. Clyde Tombaugh didn't set out to discover Pluto when he sent his ...

“New Horizons shattered a major paradigm of planetary science,” says Alan Stern, the mission’s principal investigator. “Pluto turns out to have as much complexity as Mars or Earth, so much so that I ...

Pluto was discovered at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1930 and was considered our ninth planet until 2006. The International Astronomical Union reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet ...