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The rings of Saturn are the most extensive and complex ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging in size from micrometers to meters, [ 1] that orbit around Saturn. The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of rocky material.
A ring system is a disc or torus orbiting an astronomical object that is composed of solid material such as gas, dust, meteoroids, planetoids or moonlets and stellar objects. Ring systems are best known as planetary rings, common components of satellite systems around giant planets such as of Saturn, or circumplanetary disks.
2060 Chiron is a ringed small Solar System body in the outer Solar System, orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus. Discovered in 1977 by Charles Kowal, it was the first-identified member of a new class of objects now known as centaurs —bodies orbiting between the asteroid belt and the Kuiper belt.
These exposures test Webb’s ability to spot faint moons around the planet and its rings, since any newly discovered moons could help scientists better understand Saturn’s present and past systems.
The planet Jupiter has a system of faint planetary rings. The Jovian rings were the third ring system to be discovered in the Solar System, after those of Saturn and Uranus. The main ring was discovered in 1979 by the Voyager 1 space probe [1] and the system was more thoroughly investigated in the 1990s by the Galileo orbiter. [2]
The Kuiper belt is home to most of the objects that astronomers generally accept as dwarf planets: Orcus, Pluto, [5] Haumea, [6] Quaoar, and Makemake. [7] Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region. [8] [9]
List of nearest exoplanets. Fomalhaut b (Dagon), 25 light-years away, with its parent star Fomalhaut blacked out, as pictured by Hubble in 2012. [ 1] In 2020 this object was determined to be an expanding debris cloud from a collision of asteroids rather than a planet. [ 2] There are 7,026 known exoplanets, or planets outside the Solar System ...
A global storm girdles the planet in 2011. The storm passes around the planet, such that the storm's head (bright area) passes its tail. Saturn's atmosphere exhibits a banded pattern similar to Jupiter's, but Saturn's bands are much fainter and are much wider near the equator. The nomenclature used to describe these bands is the same as on Jupiter.