RAY OF HOPE – Researchers said on Wednesday they had detected a ring encircling Quaoar, similar to the one around the planet Saturn.
But those around the Quaoar defy current understanding of where such rings could form.
The rings are also located much farther away from it than current scientific understanding allows.
“This is the discovery of a ring that is located in a place that shouldn’t be possible,” said astronomer Bruno Morgado of the Valongo Observatory and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
Bruno Morgado is the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.
Discovered in 2002, Quaoar is currently defined as a minor planet and is proposed to be a dwarf planet.
But that status has not been officially granted by the International Astronomical Union, the scientific body that does these things.
Quaoar’s diameter is about 1,110 km, about a third that of Earth’s moon and half that of the dwarf planet, Pluto.
Quaoar has a minor moon named Weywot, son of Quaoar in mythology, with a diameter of 105 miles 170 km that orbits outside the ring.
Also Read: Astronomers Find Baby Planets
Inhabiting a distant region called the Kuiper belt which is inhabited by various icy bodies, Quaoar orbits about 43 times farther than Earth’s distance from the sun.
For comparison, Neptune, the outermost planet, orbits about 30 times farther than Earth’s distance from the sun, and Pluto about 39 times farther.
The Quaoar rings were seen using the European Space Agency’s orbiting Cheops telescope, whose primary goal is studying planets outside our solar system, as well as ground-based telescopes.