Pluto-Charon system Archives

Snapshot of Pluto and Charon during kiss-and-capture. Credit Robert Melikyan and Adeene Denton.

Astrogeology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Pluto, Press Release

An Origin For Pluto’s Subsurface Ocean?

by Keith CowingJanuary 7, 2025January 7, 2025

Billions of years ago, in the frigid outer reaches of our solar system, two icy worlds collided. Rather than destroying each other in a cosmic catastrophe, they spun together like […]

The predicted uncompressed density of the Pluto-Charon system (colored curves) as the fraction of the protosolar C inventory contained in refractory organics increases from 0% to 100%, assuming the canonical protosolar abundances in Lodders 2021 (L21, see Table 1). The horizontal black dashed line represents the average uncompressed density of the system ∼ 1800 kg m−3 (Barr & Schwamb 2016; McKinnon et al. 2017), taken to be the most representative value we have for the bulk composition of large KBOs. The gray area shows the 3σ uncertainty (± 20 kg m−3 , Brozovi´c et al. 2015, McKinnon et al. 2017, Nimmo et al. 2017). -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Meteorites & Asteroids, Status Report

A Broad Set of Solar and Cosmochemical Data Indicates High C-N-O Abundances For Our Solar System

by Keith CowingSeptember 16, 2024September 16, 2024

We examine the role of refractory organics as a major C carrier in the outer protosolar nebula and its implications for the compositions of large Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) and […]