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: Observat贸rio 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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I read the post and thought nothing of it.
I鈥檓 just getting old too.
And we all love Lily Tomlin.
[to Red Badger] You been talking about Uranus again? [punches him] Right before Halloween? I guess you think I’m kicking you, Red. But it ain’t so. What I’m doing is talking. You hear? I’m talking to all those goons down there in Kansas. I’m talking to all those villains in Saturn and Mars and at the planetarium and ...
“Little Buzz” Lightyear
Cool!!
Thanks for posting.
馃幍 And Chiron, Chiron so far away... 馃幍
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Uranus?
Somebody had to say it.
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