A few days ago, we teased that we have an exciting result to share with you. Here it is!
On June 3rd, Chariklo — the largest object between Saturn and Uranus — passed in front of a relatively bright star. It cast a shadow across South America.
A collaboration of telescopes — including Skynet’s PROMPT telescopes in Chile — timed the occultation of the star by Chariklo, hoping to use the data to better measure Chariklo’s size and shape:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature13155_SF1.html
But when we analyzed the data, we were surprised to find that something also dimmed the light before, and again after, the main occultation. Two moons?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature13155_F1.html
No, because we saw these additional occultations at each telescope — each under a different part of the shadow:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature13155_SF3.html
Putting everyone’s data together, it was clear that we had discovered a ring — two rings actually!
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/fig_tab/nature13155_F2.html
This is the first detection of rings around a solar-system body other than the four gas giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
For more information on Chariklo:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=546160778763555
For the press release:
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1410/
For the full scientific article, in Nature:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13155.html