2014/03/26 by F. Braga-Ribas, B. Sicardy, J. L. Ortiz +81 · 7 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #Planetary Science and Exploration #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.EP
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nature13155
published as Braga-Ribas et al., Nature, Volume 508, Issue 7494, pp. 72-75 (2014)
openalex publication_date 2014/03/26 · arxiv created 2014/09/25 · arxiv updated 2014/09/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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 124±9 km. A multi-chord stellar occultation revealed the presence of two dense rings around Chariklo, with widths of about 7 km and 3 km, optical depths 0.4 and 0.06, and orbital radii 391 and 405 km, respectively. The present orientation of the ring is consistent with an edge-on geometry in 2008, thus providing a simple explanation for the dimming of Chariklo's system between 1997 and 2008, and for the gradual disappearance of ice and other absorption features in its spectrum over the same period. This implies that the rings are partially composed of water ice. These rings may be the remnants of a debris disk, which were possibly confined by embedded kilometre-sized satellites.