Posted on 10/24/2025 12:52:05 PM PDT by Red Badger
Astronomers have found signs that the small icy world Chiron, orbiting between Saturn and Uranus, may be forming a new ring system in near-real time.
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an illustration of Chiron with rings An artist's conception of the small icy world Chiron, which orbits between Saturn and Uranus and may be building its own ring system. (Image credit: Observatório Nacional/MCTI/Chrystian Pereira) In a universe where change usually unfolds over eons, astronomers have gotten a rare front-row seat to watch a small, icy world beyond Saturn build a brand-new set of rings in real time.
A team of Brazil-based astronomers found that the bands of material orbiting around (2060) Chiron, a 125-mile-wide (200 kilometers wide) object that circles the sun between Saturn and Uranus, are new and still taking shape. The findings suggest that Chiron's surroundings are in a transitional state somewhere between a chaotic cloud of debris and a fully formed ring system, offering scientists a rare snapshot of ring formation in progress, which has never been directly witnessed before.
"It was an exciting surprise," Chrystian Pereira, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Observatory in Brazil who led the study, told Live Science. "In a way, it reminds us that the solar system is alive and continuously evolving, even on human timescales."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
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Taint?
Is there another way of forming anything?
At least we’re not talking about rings around...well, you know.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
😂😁🙄😏..........................
That’s one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy .... Cue telephone operator (Ruth Buzzi)....
25 Earths will fit in Uranus. 26 if you relax.
Oww!😳
Sounds like something to see your doctor about.
Wipe those rings away.
You mean Lily Tomlin, not Ruth Buzzi.
you’re right!
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen either of them.
You may have missed this quote...
“This amazing discovery also has the potential to lower the cost of a six-pack of beer!” Pereira told Live Science.
As an astronomy enthusiast I have studied the asteroid belt and Chiron is the only relatively large asteroid that far out (some others might have been the moons captured by Uranus). It orbits in 50.7 years and sometimes comes in closer than Saturn’s orbit while also getting out towards but not beyond the orbit of Uranus. The perihelia of Chiron take place in the portion of the solar system out beyond Earth in late March and early April; Chiron almost collided with Saturn in 720 according to reconstructions of its orbit. This may have substantially changed its previous orbit, if Chiron had been captured by Saturn it would have become its seventh largest moon.
Chiron is currently approaching its next perihelion due around 2046, so it was recently at its furthest point from the Sun (aphelion) around 2021. Its location in the solar system is currently out towards where Jupiter is located but it is falling behind Jupiter which is moving at twice to three times its orbital speed at present. Saturn is currently a little behind on an inside track, and will overtake Chiron on that converging inside track around 2030, after which Chiron will begin to keep pace and almost catch up when it gets closest to the Sun, but after about 2050 it will fall behind again and there is no potential for a near-Saturn encounter on this cycle.
Another asteroid that goes way out is Hidalgo, which crosses the orbits of both Jupiter and Saturn and takes about 14 years to orbit the Sun. Almost all the asteroids of any substantial size remain in the main belts between Mars and Jupiter, Eros is the largest of the family between Mars and Earth and is quite a bit smaller than Chiron.
Chiron is listed as both a minor planet and a comet because it exhibits some characteristics of a comet. It is much larger than most comets, for example it’s about ten times the size of Halley’s comet (an object that crosses all planetary orbits except Mercury in its approximately 76 year orbital cycle). Halley’s comet just recently passed its aphelion
That was comic telephone operator “Ernestine.” (Lili Tomlin)
Or did Buzzi do it first?
oops, Lily :)
it was Lily I just misremembered!
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