Quaoar, a darkened celestial body outside of Neptune, has been found to exhibit unusual rings that cannot be explained using current ring formation theories.
According to the University of Sheffield in the UK and foreign media, an international research team led by Professor Bruno Morgado of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil published the results of the observations of rings in Quaoa in the scientific journal Nature.
Quaoah, whose existence was first confirmed in 2002, was observed as a celestial body about 1,280 km in diameter orbiting the Sun with a cycle of 288 years, in the outer periphery, about 6.4 billion km from the Sun.
It has been suggested that such a small celestial body, which is only half of Pluto, which had the status of the ninth planet in the solar system and was demoted to a dwarf planet, itself has a ring, and even that does not fit ring formation theory.
The research team found the rings in Quaoa using the high-speed, high-sensitivity HiPERCAM camera mounted on the 10.4 m Canary Large Telescope (GTC), the world’s largest optical telescope, on the island of La Palma.
The rings are so small and faint that they don’t show up in direct images of Quaoah.
When Quaoah instead passes in front of another star and passes in a “star eclipse” (star eclipse) in less than a minute, it unexpectedly catches the starlight shrinking back and forth twice, confirming the existence of a ring around the celestial body.
In the solar system, rings exist on large planets such as Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus, and only two of the smaller celestial bodies, such as Chariklo and Haumea, have been found.
It has been suggested that all of these rings are close enough for the tidal force of the celestial bodies to act such that the materials making up the rings do not fuse into satellites (moon) and remain as rings.
It was within the so-called “Roche limit,” the maximum distance a ring could last.
However, the ring found in Quaoah was formed at a location seven times the radius of the celestial body and twice the Roche limit.
Saturn’s central ring, the most prominent in the solar system, is three times the planet’s radius.
“I didn’t expect to find a new ring in the solar system, and even more so I didn’t expect to find a ring formed so far from a celestial body that would challenge existing ring theories,” said the co- Author of the study Dr. Vick Dillon, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield: “Everyone learns about Saturn’s beautiful rings from an early age and we hope this new discovery will provide a broader insight into ring formation.”
Quaoah is named for the creator who is worshiped by the Tongba people, an indigenous people of Southern California.
The satellite with a diameter of 74 kilometers was also named “Weywot” after Quaoa’s son.
As for the status of the Kuiper Belt celestial object, Quaoah has sufficient conditions to be classified as a round-shaped dwarf planet by gravity, but it is only captured as a blurry dot even with the most powerful telescope, so no one can tell that it is itself is a dwarf planet, the New York Times reported.