Chariklo is a Comet-like Miniature Planet With Rings
Posted on March 28, 2014
Astronomers from the Niels Bohr Institute have discovered Chariklo, a comet-like miniature planet with two rings of ice and pebbles. Wired calls it an "asteroid with rings."
The celestial body is called a Centaur in the Nature paper published by the astronomers. Chariklo is located between Saturn and Uranus. Astronomers say Chariklo was previously located in the Kuiper Belt but was thrown out and is now located between Saturn and Uranus about two billion kilometers out in the solar system. It has a diameter of 250 kilometers. Chariklo's inner ring is four miles wide and its outer ring is two miles wide.
Uffe Grae Jorgensen, an astronomer in Astrophysics and Planetary Science at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, says in a statement, "The camera was specially developed at the Niels Bohr Institute and has a stunningly high resolution, which we especially exploit to look for exoplanets. But when the area where we are looking for exoplanets isn't 'up' in the sky, we use our observation time for other projects and so we followed Chariklo, which just passed in front of a star."
Jorgensen also says, "We were not even looking for rings, because they had never been observed around small objects like Chariklo, so it is a totally surprising discovery. The entire passage only lasted 5 seconds, but we could even determine incredible details about the rings. There are two separate thin rings, which are comprised of ice particles and pebbles. The two rings are only 3 and 7 km wide and no more than a few hundred meters thick. There are 14 km between the centers of the two rings and there is a 9 km wide gap between them. They have been measured at a distance of two billion kilometers with an accuracy of plus/minus a few hundred meters. It is really impressive."
Take a look: