Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on the frozen surface of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon.
- Detecting these molecules could tell scientists how Charon and other icy bodies at the solar system’s edge were born.
- Since its discovery in 1978, Charon has been extensively studied — but previous research has been limited in terms of what wavelengths of light could be explored during these analyses.
- Charon is a midsized body roughly 750 miles wide and located in the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy debris, comets and dwarf planets, also referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), at the solar system’s edge.
About Kuiper Belt
- The Kuiper Belt is a doughnut-shaped region of icy bodies extending far beyond the orbit of Neptune.
- It is home to Pluto and Arrokoth. Both worlds were visited by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
- There may be millions of other icy worlds in the Kuiper Belt that were left over from the formation of our solar system.
- Scientists call these worlds Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), or trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Trans-Neptunian objects are objects in our solar system that have an orbit beyond Neptune.
- The Kuiper Belt shouldn’t be confused with the Oort Cloud, which is a much more distant region of icy, comet-like bodies that surrounds the solar system, including the Kuiper Belt.
- Both the Oort Cloud and the Kuiper Belt are thought to be sources of comets.
