It is one the largest members of the Kuiper Belt, a group of objects that orbit the Sun in the solar system beyond Neptune. That implies that Charon’s interior possesses liquid water.”Ĭharon is the companion world to Pluto (or one would say a moon of Pluto, except that Pluto is no longer considered to be a planet). “Our spectra point consistently to cryovolcanism, which brings liquid water to the surface, where it freezes into ice crystals. “There are a number of mechanisms that could explain the presence of crystalline water ice on the surface of Charon,” said Jason Cook, the PhD student at Arizona State University who led the team of planetary scientists studying the surface of Charon. This discovery could have profound implications for other similar-type worlds in the Kuiper Belt, which is the region of the solar system that extends out beyond the orbit of Neptune and contains a number of small bodies, the largest of which include Pluto and Charon. This action could be occurring on timescales as short as a few hours or days, and at levels that would recoat Charon to a depth of one millimeter every 100,000 years.
The observations suggest that liquid water mixed with ammonia from deep within Charon is pushing out to the ultra-cold surface. Gillett Gemini North telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, show the fingerprints of ammonia hydrates and water crystals spread in patches across Charon, and have been described as the best evidence yet for the existence of these compounds on worlds such as Charon.
The observations, made with the Frederick C.
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