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Kepler May Uncover Numerous Ring Worlds
In Star Wars Episode II "Attack of the Clones," a deadly cat-and-mouse chase between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett takes place in a rocky ring encircling the desert planet Geonosis.
We don't have such a planet in our solar system, but rings made of rock or silicates might be common in the Milky Way galaxy. And, there is a chance the planet-hunting Kepler space observatory might find them says Hilke Schlichting of UCLA, in a recently posted paper.
BIG PIC: Meet Kepler's Entire Exoplanet Family
Kepler can't photograph exoplanets, much less rings. But it is building an unprecedented planet survey by measuring the telltale dimming of a star as a planet passes across the face of it. (This only works if the planet's orbit is tilted edge-on to our view from Earth). The signature of the planet with rings would have a different-shaped shadow transit footprint from that of a planet without rings (as shown in the chart here for various transit paths.)
No rings have yet been found around the extrasolar planets that have been discovered to date. But the majority of the Kepler planets are so close to their stars that gravitational forces would keep the planets spinning perpendicular to their orbits. This means a ring system would be tilted edge-on to our view too, and be virtually invisible.
