Solar System Surprises
Hey Space Placers! We got two solar system surprises yesterday with the announcement that an asteroid has a dual ring system and the discovery of a far flung dwarf planet . Pretty amazing that an asteroid could develop a dual ring system as we previously only knew of the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune having ring systems. Chariklo is a 250 km wide asteroid that orbits between Saturn and Uranus and is part of a group of asteroids known as Centaurs. Ring system of Chariklo - ESA Centaurs are intriguing as there are an estimated 44,000 of them and they have been observed to behave as comets as well as asteroids. The ring system around Chariklo was discovered when the asteroid passed in front of a star and astronomers observed multiple instances of the star being blocked (occulted) by not only the body of the asteroid but a ring system as well. This was the same way that the ring system of Uranus was discovered. The other big announceme...