Miniature Planet

ASTRONOMERS DISCOVERED FIRST EVER MINIATURE PLANET:

Until now, rings in space were only found around giant planets like Saturn and Jupiter. But astronomers have now discovered, two billion kilometers out in the solar system between Saturn and Uranus, the first ever miniature planet with two rings of ice and pebbles.
Researchers from Neil’s Bohr Institute call this smaller celestial body, Chariklo. Interestingly, they discovered it has two separate thin rings, which are comprised of ice particles and pebbles. The two rings are only three and seven kilometers wide and no more than a few hundred meters thick. There are 14 km between the centers of the two rings and there is a 9 km wide gap between them.

Chariklo is located in the Kuiper Belt, a collection of thousands of dwarfs planets and comets in orbit beyond Neptune on the edge of our solar system. But at some point it was thrown out of this belt and is now between Saturn and Uranus, where there is a collection of small objects called Centaur.

Chariklo is the largest of these objects with a diameter of 250 km. this comet like object has been known for many years, but despite careful study, its rings have never been observed before now. This has happened because a new camera is now being used on the Danish telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observation in chile.