A Giant Impact Origin of Pluto-Charon

@article{Canup2005AGI,
  title={A Giant Impact Origin of Pluto-Charon},
  author={Robin Canup},
  journal={Science},
  year={2005},
  volume={307},
  pages={546 - 550}
}
  • R. Canup
  • Published 28 January 2005
  • Geology, Medicine
  • Science
Pluto and its moon, Charon, are the most prominent members of the Kuiper belt, and their existence holds clues to outer solar system formation processes. Here, hydrodynamic simulations are used to demonstrate that the formation of Pluto-Charon by means of a large collision is quite plausible. I show that such an impact probably produced an intact Charon, although it is possible that a disk of material orbited Pluto from which Charon later accumulated. These findings suggest that collisions… Expand
View on AAAS
authors.library.caltech.edu
178 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
29
Background Citations
96
Methods Citations
22
Results Citations
9

Topics from this paper

    Paper Mentions

    News Article
    Il ritorno di Plutone
    Focus.it
    21 September 2018

    178 Citations

    Citation Type

    Citation Type

    Forced Resonant Migration of Pluto's Outer Satellites by Charon
    TLDR
    The orbital periods of the two new moons of Pluto are nearly integer multiples of Charon's period, suggesting that they were driven outward by resonant interactions with Charon during its tidal orbital expansion. Expand
    Introduction to ‘Pluto, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt Objects’: Pluto on the Eve of the New Horizons Encounter
    The July 2015 fly-through of the Pluto-Charon system by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft promises to revolutionize our understanding of icy dwarf (or small) planets and the broader trans-Neptunian… Expand
    The fate of debris in the Pluto-Charon system
    The Pluto-Charon system has come into sharper focus following the fly by of New Horizons. We use N-body simulations to probe the unique dynamical history of this binary dwarf planet system. We follow… Expand
    The Charon-forming giant impact as a source of Pluto's dark equatorial regions
    The New Horizons spacecraft revealed a large dark reddish area along Pluto’s equatorial region, probably made up by organics. Here the authors show that it could be formed by the very same giant… Expand
    A Pluto–Charon Sonata. III. Growth of Charon from a Circum-Pluto Ring of Debris
    Current theory considers two options for the formation of the Pluto-Charon binary (Canup 2005, 2011; Desch 2015). In the `hit-and-run' model, a lower mass projectile barely hits the more massive… Expand
    Tidal evolution of the Pluto–Charon binary
    A giant collision is believed to be at the origin of the Pluto-Charon system. As a result, the initial orbit and spins after impact may have substantially differed from those observed today. More… Expand
    Secular Evolution of Satellites by Tidal Effect
    Both the Earth’s Moon and Pluto’s moon, Charon, have an important fraction of the mass of their systems, and therefore they could be classified as double-planets rather than as satellites. The… Expand
    Evolution of a ring around the Pluto-Charon binary
    We consider the formation of satellites around the Pluto-Charon binary. An early collision between the two partners likely produced the binary and a narrow ring of debris, out of which arose the… Expand
    THE FORMATION OF PLUTO'S LOW-MASS SATELLITES
    Motivated by the New Horizons mission, we consider how Pluto's small satellites—currently Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra—grow in debris from the giant impact that forms the Pluto-Charon binary. After… Expand
    Catastrophic Events in Protoplanetary Disks and Their Observational Manifestations
    Observations of protoplanetary disks with high angular resolution using an ALMA interferometer showed that ring-shaped structures are often visible in their images, indicating strong disturbances in… Expand
    ...
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    ...

    References

    SHOWING 1-10 OF 22 REFERENCES
    The angular momentum of the Pluto-Charon system: considerations about its origin
    Abstract The formation conditions of the binary system Pluto-Charon in the protoplanetary disk are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to its high content of angular momentum that would make the… Expand
    On the origin of the Pluto-Charon binary
    The normalized angular momentum density of Pluto-Charon (0.45) exceeds the critical value of 0.39 above which no stably rotating single object exists, suggesting a collisional origin for this binary.… Expand
    On the origin of Triton and Pluto
    Lyttleton hypothesized long ago that Triton and Pluto originated as adjacent prograde satellites of Neptune1. With the presently accepted masses of Triton and Pluto–Charon2,3, however, the momentum… Expand
    The origin of Pluto's orbit: implications for the
    The origin of the highly eccentric, inclined, and resonance-locked orbit of Pluto has long been a puzzle. A possible explanation has been proposed recently which suggests that these extraordinary… Expand
    Possible Origin and Early Dynamical Evolution of the Pluto-Charon Binary
    Abstract The dynamical state of the Pluto-Charon binary is distinctive in several respects including its well-known position in the Neptune 3:2 mean motion resonance, its librating argument of… Expand
    Dynamics of Lunar Formation
    ▪ Abstract The giant impact theory is the leading hypothesis for the origin of the Moon. This review focuses on dynamical aspects of an impact-induced lunar formation, in particular those areas that… Expand
    Lunar accretion from an impact-generated disk
    Although the mechanism by which the Moon was formed is currently unknown, several lines of evidence point to its accretion from a circumterrestrial disk of debris generated by a giant impact on the… Expand
    Simulations of a late lunar-forming impact
    Abstract Results of about 100 hydrodynamic simulations of potential Moon-forming impacts are presented, focusing on the “late impact” scenario in which the lunar forming impact occurs near the very… Expand
    KBO binaries: how numerous were they?
    Given the large orbital separation and high satellite-to-primary mass ratio of all known Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) binaries, it is important to reassess their stability as bound pairs with respect to… Expand
    The mass ratio of Charon to Pluto from Hubble Space Telescope astrometry with the fine guidance sensors
    Abstract The mass ratio of Charon to Pluto is a basic parameter describing the binary system and is necessary for determining the individual masses and densities of these two bodies. Previous… Expand
    ...
    1
    2
    3
    ...