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Writing in the journal Nature, Dr Will Grundy, an expert on the outer solar system at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and his colleagues said it could explain similar reddish spots found on Pluto's other moons such as Nix. They say this area of Charon spends long periods in shadow, meaning temperatures drop to extremely low enough to trap the methane as ice.Īfter a long winter, the pole is then exposed to sunlight which triggers chemical reactions in the methane ice that produce the red colour.