Sky and Telescope - July 19, 2007
Maybe it has something to do with the sweltering heat these days, but it seems that every time I turn around, someone else is talking about ice volcanoes. First it was Saturn's moon Enceladus. Then two other Saturnian moons had them: Tethys and Dione. Now Pluto's largest moon, Charon, might be spewing frozen geysers.
The latest result comes courtesy of a group of astronomers who pointed the 8-meter Frederick C. Gillett telescope at Gemini Observatory toward the famous dwarf planet's satellite. Using Gemini, Jason Cook (Southwest Research Institute, Colorado) and Steven Desch (Arizona State University) captured some of the best spectra of Charon to date.
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