An asteroid-sized rock orbiting between Saturn and Uranus may have a system of rings.
Amanda Bosh of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and her team observed the minor planet 2060 Chiron passing in front of a star, using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network on Haleakala, both in Hawaii. The team saw two small dips in brightness of the star before and after Chiron's transit, suggesting that a ring of debris surrounds the system — perhaps remnants of Chiron's formation or material ejected from its surface in comet-like jets.
If confirmed, Chiron's ring system would be the fifth known in the Solar System.
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Rings proposed for orbiting rock. Nature 519, 393 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/519393a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/519393a
