Observations made by James Webb Space Telescope are providing scientists with a more complete understanding of the composition and evolution of Charon the largest moon orbiting any of the dwarf planets in our Solar System.
For the first time, Webb detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide — both frozen as solids — on the surface of Charon, a spherical body about 750 miles (1,200 km) across, researchers said Tuesday.
These elements are in addition to water ice, ammonia-containing compounds, and organic materials previously documented on Charon’s surface.
Charon, discovered in 1978, has the distinction of being the largest moon in the Solar System in relation to the size of the planet it orbits.
It is about half the diameter and one-eighth the mass of Pluto, a dwarf planet that resides in an icy region of the outer Solar System called the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune, the most distant planet.
The distance between Charon and Pluto is approximately 19,640 kilometers, compared to the 384,400 kilometers that separate Earth from its Moon, on average.
Most of Charon’s surface is gray, with reddish-brown regions around its poles composed of organic materials.
Webb’s observations complement data obtained when NASA’s New Horizons probe passed by Charon during its visit to the Pluto system in 2015. The new study took advantage of the capabilities of the telescope, launched in 2021 and which began collecting data the following year, to record a wider range of wavelengths than was previously possible.
The presence of hydrogen peroxide is linked to the irradiation processes that Charon experienced over time, the researchers said, while the carbon dioxide is likely an original component, dating back to the formation of this moon about 4.5 billion years ago.
The researchers explained that hydrogen peroxide formed when the water ice on Charon’s surface was chemically altered by constant exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun, as well as energetic particles from the solar wind and galactic cosmic rays that pass through the Universe.
They also stated that the carbon dioxide observed by Webb was likely buried beneath the surface and exposed by impacts on Charon. The substance was likely part of the primordial material from which both the moon and Pluto originally formed.
Scientists were surprised that carbon dioxide had not been detected earlier.
“The detection of this substance was a satisfactory confirmation of our expectations,” said Silvia Protopapa, assistant director of the space studies department at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, co-investigator on the New Horizons mission and lead author of the study published in Nature Communications magazine.
“The detection of hydrogen peroxide on Charon was unexpected. Honestly, I didn’t expect to find evidence of this on the surface,” Protopapa added.
Charon’s new observations help tell a broader story about the celestial bodies that populate our planetary array.
“Each small body in the outer Solar System is a unique piece of a larger puzzle that scientists are trying to piece together,” Protopapa said.
The researchers used a Webb instrument called the Near Infrared Spectrograph to make four observations in 2022 and 2023, completely covering Charon’s northern hemisphere.
“These new Webb observations add carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide to the known inventory of this moon’s surface components. Both provide information about the ongoing processes of surface irradiation and renewal caused by impacts,” said Ian Wong, study co-author and scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
Spacecraft takes a photo of the Earth and the Moon side by side seen from space; look
This content was originally published in James Webb Telescope finds frozen compounds on Pluto’s moon on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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