Discovery of Asteroid With 2 Rings - Centaur Chariklo

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Dotini
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http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.wral.com%2Fdiscovery-an-asteroid-with-rings%2F13510966%2F

"The European Southern Observatory announced this week the discovery of rings around an asteroid 1.4 billion miles from Earth. Chariklo is the largest of the class of asteroids orbiting the sun between Saturn and Uranus known as Centaurs. Results were published online today in the journal Nature."

Another link: http://aerospace.firetrench.com/201...double-ring-system-around-asteroid-like-body/
 
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Very Cool. we were just discussing Rings in another thread and why they are typical of Gas Giants but not smaller bodies. Very interesting to read about this.
 
DHF said:
Very Cool. we were just discussing Rings in another thread and why they are typical of Gas Giants but not smaller bodies. Very interesting to read about this.

Nature is a wondrous place, and Man is developing new tools of exploration, it is a pleasure to say. :smile:

This novel way of observing rings by occulting a star with a centaur might be hard to repeat. It will interesting to see how it affects discussion of planetary rings.