Harrison Tasoff from SPACE.com reports in Scientific American today
on the discovery that the Kuiper Belt dwarf planet Haumea has a ring
system.
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Originally Posted by Harrison Tasoff from SPACE.com
Earlier this year, Haumea passed between Earth and a distant star, allowing planetary scientists to get a better idea of the dwarf planet's shape and size. The new findings were announced today (Oct. 11) in the journal Nature.
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Harrison Tasoff from SPACE.com
Haumea is not the smallest known object with rings. In 2013, astronomers identified rings around the 188-mile-wide (302 km) asteroid Chariklo, and in 2015, researchers announced that a similar asteroid, Chiron, may have rings as well. Researchers think the two objects, which belong to a group of asteroids known as Centaurs, might also hail from the Kuiper Belt, suggesting that rings may be more common in these objects than scientists previously thought.
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Article here :-
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...mea-has-rings/
Nature paper here :-
http://www.nature.com/articles/natur...icamerican.com