Related papers: Rings beyond the giant planets
Until about a decade ago, ring systems were only known to exist around giant planets. Each one of the four giant planets harbours its own distinctive and unique system of rings and inner satellites. The past decade has been marked by the…
Until now, rings have been detected in the Solar System exclusively around the four giant planets. Here we report the discovery of the first minor-body ring system around the Centaur object (10199) Chariklo, a body with equivalent radius…
The recent discovery of dense rings around the Centaur Chariklo (and possibly Chiron) reveals that complete dense planetary rings are not only found around Saturn and Uranus, but also around small bodies orbiting in the vicinity of those…
Since 2013, dense and narrow rings are known around the small Centaur object Chariklo and the dwarf planet Haumea. Dense material has also been detected around the Centaur Chiron, although its nature is debated. This is the first time ever…
All the four giant planets in our Solar System have rings, but their characteristics are very different. The rings consist of a number of small particles, although individual particles have not been directly imaged. Near the central planet,…
In addition to its suite of narrow dense rings, Uranus is surrounded by an extremely complex system of dusty rings that were most clearly seen by the Voyager spacecraft after it flew past the planet. A new analysis of the highest resolution…
Rings are ubiquitous around giant planets in our Solar System. They evolve jointly with the nearby satellite system. They could form either during the giant planet formation process or much later, as a result of large scale dynamical…
Centaurs are minor planets orbiting between Jupiter and Neptune that have or had crossing orbits with one or more giant planets. Recent observations and reinterpretation of previous observations have revealed the existence of ring systems…
The unexpected finding of a ring system around the Centaur (10199) Chariklo opened a new window for dynamical studies and posed many questions about the formation and evolutionary mechanisms of Centaurs as well as the relationship to…
Ring systems have been discovered around several small bodies in the outer Solar System through stellar occultations. While such measurements provide key information about ring geometry and dynamical interactions, little is known about…
A ring system consisting of two dense narrow rings has been discovered around Centaur Chariklo. The existence of these rings around a small object poses various questions, such as their origin, stability, and lifetime. In order to…
Stellar occultations provide a powerful tool to explore objects of the outer solar system. The Gaia mission now provides milli-arcsec accuracy on the predictions of these events and makes possible observations that were previously…
Dense and narrow rings have been discovered recently around the small Centaur object Chariklo and the dwarf planet Haumea, while being suspected around the Centaur Chiron. They are the first rings observed in the Solar System elsewhere than…
In 2014, the discovery of two well-defined rings around the Centaur (10199) Chariklo were announced. This was the first time that such structures were found around a small body. In 2015, it was proposed that the Centaur (2060) Chiron may…
Since the discovery of a planet transiting its host star in the year 2000, thousands of additional exoplanets and exoplanet candidates have been detected, mostly by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Some of them are almost as small as the…
Planetary rings are the only nearby astrophysical disks, and the only disks that have been investigated by spacecraft. Although there are significant differences between rings and other disks, chiefly the large planet/ring mass ratio that…
Two narrow and dense rings (called C1R and C2R) were discovered around the Centaur object (10199) Chariklo during a stellar occultation observed on 2013 June 3. Following this discovery, we planned observations of several occultations by…
This chapter of the book Planetary Ring Systems addresses the origin of planetary rings, one of the least understood processes related to planet formation and evolution. Whereas rings seem ubiquitous around giant planets, their great…
The presence of rings and moons around exoplanets is likely to be one of the next great discoveries in exoplanet research. Using theories developed for the Solar System, we explore the possibility of coupled ring-moon cycles around…
We investigate whether rings around extrasolar planets could be detected from those planets' transit lightcurves. To this end we develop a basic theoretical framework for calculating and interpreting the lightcurves of ringed planet…