STRANGE BUT TRUE--AN ASTEROID WITH RINGS We werent looking for a ring and didnt think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all, so the discovery — and the amazing amount of detail we saw in the system — came as a complete surprise! says Felipe Braga-Ribas of Observatório Nacional/MCTI in Rio de Janeiro. He planned the observing campaign and is the lead author of a March 26th paper in Nature describing the results. According to their analysis, the rings are only 3 km and 7 km wide, respectively, with a 9 km gap between them. I try to imagine how it would be to stand on the surface of this icy asteroid and stare up at a such a ring system 1000 times closer than the Moon, adds team member Uffe Gråe Jørgensen of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark. spaceweather/
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 23:18:41 +0000