Rings beyond the giant planets
Abstract
Until 2013, only the giant planets were known to host ring systems. In June 2013, a stellar occulation revealed the presence of narrow and dense rings around Chariklo, a small Centaur object that orbits between Saturn and Uranus. Meanwhile, the Cassini spacecraft revealed evidence for the possible past presence of rings around the Saturnian satellites Rhea and Iapetus. Mars and Pluto are expected to have tenuous dusty rings, though they have so far evaded detection. More remotely, transit events observed around a star in 2007 may have revealed for the first time exoplanetary rings around a giant planet orbiting that star. So, evidence is building to show that rings are more common features in the universe than previously thought. Several interesting issues arising from the discovery (or suspicion) of new ring systems are described in this chapter.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1612.03321,
title = {Rings beyond the giant planets},
author = {Bruno Sicardy and Maryame El Moutamid and Alice C. Quillen and Paul M. Schenk and Mark R. Showalter and Kevin Walsh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.03321},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
23 pages, 8 figures, version 2. This material will be published as Chapter 7 of the book Planetary Ring Systems, edited by Matthew S. Tiscareno and Carl D. Murray. See: www.cambridge.org/9781107113824