European astronomers have announced the first discovery of a ring around a dwarf planet. Dwarf planets are similar to Pluto, in that they are small and hang out in a zone with others of their kind. This one, Haumea, is beyond Neptune, taking 284 Earth years to go around the Sun.
The ring is very faint, but astronomers at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia were able to find it when they saw Haumea cross in front of a star. The star’s light went out not only when Haumea crossed in front of it, but briefly before and after, indicating a ring was present.
All four of the giant planets in our solar system have rings, but this is the first found around a smaller planet. Its cousin Pluto definitely doesn’t have one, because we looked when the New Horizons probe went by it.
Haumea is named after the Hawaiian goddess of childbirth and has another oddity. It spins so rapidly – taking less than 4 hours for one spin -- that it doesn’t look exactly round, but more oval shaped. It’s the least round of any world we know bigger than about 60 miles across. It has two known moons, and now a ring too. The zone past Neptune, called the Kuiper Belt, is just getting more and more interesting.
(Our illustration is NOT a photo, just an artist's impression, based on what we have observed so far.)
