WASHINGTON – Saturn’s rings are one of the wonders of our solar system, with a diameter of about 280,000 kilometers as they circle the giant planet. However, smaller celestial bodies in the solar system also have notable ring systems, although they are not as large in scale.
Scientists say they have observed for the first time a ring system in the process of formation and evolution, consisting of four rings and scattered material, surrounding a small icy body called Chiron that orbits the sun between Saturn and Uranus.
Chiron is part of a class of objects called centaurs that inhabit the outer solar system between Jupiter and Neptune, displaying characteristics of asteroids and comets. Officially called “(2060) Chiron”, it has a diameter of about 200 kilometers (125 miles) and takes about 50 years to complete one orbit around the sun.Centaurs are composed mostly of rock, water ice, and complex organic compounds.
As its discovery in 1977,astronomers have observed Chiron periodically,and over the years have known that it is indeed surrounded by some kind of material. In this latest study, scientists obtained their best data about Chiron in 2023 using telescopes at the Pico dos Dias Observatory in Brazil to complement data from 2011, 2018 and 2022.
The researchers say that these observations clearly show that Chiron is surrounded by distinct rings-three solid rings about 273 km, 325 km, and 438 km from Chiron’s center, and another about 1,400 km from its center.
This outermost feature, detected for the first time, is located very far from Chiron and, they say, requires further observations to confirm its stability as a ring. The three inner rings are embedded in dust that swirls in a disk-like shape.
By comparing data from different observations of Chiron, the researchers detected significant changes in the ring system, clear evidence that its rings are evolving in real-time, according to Chrystian Luciano Pereira, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Observatory in Brazil and lead author of the study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
“This provides a rare picture of how such structures form and change,” Pereira said.
Chiron’s rings,Pereira added,likely consist most