Pluto's neighbouring object, Charon, could be spewing out liquid water from ultra-cold volcanoes, covering Charon's chilly surface with freshly-formed ice crystals.
This dramatic conclusion was made by Jason Cook at Arizona State University, Tempe, who looked at Charon's near-infrared spectrum using telescopes at the Gemini Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Cook found traces of both crystalline water ice and ammonia, he reports in Astrophysical Journal1.
Cook says that icy crystals can only exist on Charon if they are regularly deposited there. Crystalline ice cannot exist for long on the surface because it is bombarded with ultra-violet radiation from the Sun and charged particles, and these smooth out the crystals, he says. This is where the volcanoes come in.
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