Hubble Space Telescope image of Rhea, with artist's impression of the rings.
(Credit: NASA)
The most famous feature of the planet Saturn are its rings: these are visible from the earth using just a simple telescope. This ring system is the most distinctive of the entire solar system and consists mostly of dust, gas, rock and ice particles. Saturn is not the only planet in our solar system with rings: Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune also have ring systems – these are however much smaller and darker.
An international team of scientists have discovered Saturn's moon Rhea is encircled by a disk consisting of material which may comprise a ring system.
They came to this conclusion from observations made from the spacecraft Cassini.
This would mean that Rhea is the only known moon with a ring system. The material of the disk comprises debris and ice particles, some as large as a meter in size. This discovery means that Saturn, the so-called lord of the rings, has gained a small companion with rings or a disk. These results have been published in a current edition of the magazine Science.
Source [in German]
Nevertheless, this is the
Nevertheless, this is the first time a disk or ring has been found around a moon in our solar system.
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