When you hear about rings around objects in our Solar System, you naturally think of planets like Saturn and Neptune. But it turns out the giant gas planets aren't the only bodies that sport rings. An international team of astronomers announced yesterday in the scientific journal Nature that a system of rings has been detected around the Asteroid (10199) Chariklo - a Centaur type asteroid orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune with a radius of only about 120 kilometers. The rings, two of them at distances of 391 and 405 kilometers, were found by watching the brightness of a distant star change as the asteroid passed in front (an event known as an occultation). Telescopes in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile were required for the observations, including three of the UNC-Chapel Hill PROMPT telescopes at Cerro Tololo in Chile which were used by our own Dr. Joe Pollock. His was one of the three sites out of thirteen which detected both the asteroid and the rings. You can read more about this exciting discovery in the Nature article and the articles below.
The article in Nature
ESO Press Release
CNN
National Geographic
Scientific American
Artist rendering of ring surrounding an asteroid
