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Surprise! Asteroid Hosts A Two-Ring Circus Above Its Surface
Artist’s impression of what the rings of the asteroid Chariklo would look like from the small body’s surface. The rings’ discovery was a first for an asteroid. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)
Rings are a tough phenomenon to spot. As late as 1977, astronomers thought that the only thing in the solar system with rings was the planet Saturn. Now, we can add the first asteroid to the list of ringed bodies nearby us. The asteroid 10199 Chariklo hosts two rings, perhaps due to a collision that caused a chain of debris circling its tiny surface.
Besides the 250-kilometer (155-mile) Chariklo, the only other ringed bodies known to us so far are (in order of discovery) Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune.
“We weren’t looking for a ring and didn’t think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all, so the discovery — and the amazing amount of detail we saw in the system — came as a complete surprise,” stated Felipe Braga-Ribas of the National Observatory (Observatório Nacional) in Brazil, who led the paper about the discovery.
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Read the rest of Surprise! Asteroid Hosts A Two-Ring Circus Above Its Surface (299 words)
© Elizabeth Howell for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: Chariklo, occultation, Regulus, ringed planets, rings, UCAC4 248-108672
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/110720/surprise-asteroid-hosts-a-two-ring-circus-above-its-surface/
