Scientists have made a stunning discovery in the solar system - the asteroid with its own set of rings, which orbits the Sun between Saturn and Uranus. The asteroid is not the first planetary objects ever found, which has its own system of rings. H5>
Couple rings surrounds Chariklo asteroid. According to the исследования, published March 26 in the journal Nature, the ring is likely to have formed after the collision debris scattered around the asteroid. Availability asteroid rings also involves not yet discovered asteroid satellites, which stabilizes them.
"We were not looking for a ring and did not even think that little body as Chariklo may possess them. Therefore, the discovery came as a complete surprise! "- Says study leader Felipe Braga-Ribas of the National Observatory of Brazil. An asteroid with a diameter of 250 km looks tiny against the backdrop of the giant gaseous planets that have rings. "This discovery proves that the formation of rings around the outer body is not related to its size," - says Braga-Ribas.
June 3, 2013 Braga-Ribas led a team of astronomers to observe the passage Chariklo against the background stars, a process known as coating. When asteroid flies against the stars, it overrides its light that gives scientists the opportunity to study the asteroid in detail. Astronomers were surprised to find that a few seconds before and after the main eclipse, the star's light is interrupted, which gave reason to believe that an asteroid is surrounded by something. Comparing data collected from seven different telescopes, the team was able to determine the shape, size and orientation of the rings. The system consists of a dense inner ring width 7 km and a width of the outer ring 3 km. "On the surface of the asteroid, they look just awesome, bright ring at a distance from the surface is 1,000 times smaller than the Moon from the Earth" - says Braga- Ribas. Rings are similar to those that surround Saturn is very tight, bright, and probably formed from rocks and ice.
The speed of particles orbiting Chariklo, only a few tens of meters per second, which is relatively slow compared to the tens of kilometers per second at the rings of Saturn. While Saturn is best known cosmic body with the presence of rings in the solar system, they also have Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus, just less visible. But all of these gas giants much more Chariklo.
Astronomers used seven telescopes, most of which were located in South America. Of these, only the telescope from La Silla ( European Southern Observatory (ESO) Chile) could detect a slight gap between the rings . "This was made possible through the use of« Lucky Imager », fast and sensitive camera that generates a sequence of images at 10 frames per second," - said Braga-Ribas. Starry eclipse simultaneously by two rings of the asteroid lasted 0, 6 seconds, which allowed us to consider them in detail. The exposure time was more than other telescopes long time, so they could take pictures of the eclipse is only one ring. Video shown below as was the detection rings.
Chariklo is one of the largest asteroids centaurs. Centaurs - a group of asteroids located between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune, the transition in properties between the main belt asteroids and Kuiper belt objects, in some properties similar to comets. Perhaps it is the farthest distance from the Sun to help uncover the cause of the presence of the rings compared to the asteroids that are near Mars and Jupiter where the solar wind is stronger and probably carries the fine particles.
The relatively small size Chariklo generates a relatively low level of gravitation, which means that the asteroid able to capture only a small and slow moving particles. The presence of the ring system answers questions about why the asteroid was brighter since the last observation in 2008. And yet it remains a mystery how the ring remains stable. Over time, particles fly from the ring in different directions, the only exception is the case where the satellite has a stabilizing ring. But the mass of the satellite to be Chariklo both rings together, and at such a scale satellite easy to remove from the asteroid due to the low gravity of the latter. So maybe the ring system is relatively young. But if you still have some kind of asteroid satellites, which holds the ring in a stable condition, the rings can be Chariklo particles that were formed at the time of formation of the solar system.
Additional useful materials:
1. Видео about Chariklo with comments in English from Space.com
2. About the asteroid Chariklo on Wikipedia.
3. Астероиды Centaurs .
4. It is interesting virtual tour on Observatory in Chile.
5. Most of the English презентация to 50mb on the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the latest technology.
6. The newly discovered dwarf planet 2012 VP113 in the Oort cloud.
7. Infographics 36-year journey probe Voyager 1. Here's how to look like the ones telescopes in Chile. B>
