Chiron: ‘centaur rings’ may reveal more about cosmic body

Centaurs are celestial bodies located between asteroids and comets. One of those icy rocky bodies, Cataloged as minor planet 2060 Chiron, this planet moves in an irregular orbit around the Sun and has attracted the attention of astronomers.. This is because a possible dust disk around it transforms and changes shape over time.

Chiron was only discovered in 2011 when it passed in front of a faint star from the perspective of a ground-based observatory. This phenomenon, known as “stellar occultation,” allows the shape and size of the obscuring object to be determined by inference. In this opening passage, astronomers counted two quick occultations before Chiron passed, and two more afterward; This meant a double dust ring.

In 2018, Amanda Sickafoose, a senior scientist at the Planetary Sciences Institute in Tucson, USA, traveled to the South African Astronomical Observatory in Sutherland, South Africa, to observe a second star occultation by the centaur. The previous observation suggests that the surrounding material is not a stable ring system and is evolving mysteriously.

What did astronomers observe in Chiron’s rings in 2018?

The paper, published in The Planetary Science Journal, reveals a slightly different aspect than what was recorded in 2011.

Watching a star transit behind the centaur Chiron with a 1.9m telescope, Sickafoose said in a statement, “we detected dips in starlight.” When blocked by Chiron’s core and material located 300 to 400 kilometers away on either side“.

The team observed in precise numbers the dips in starlight produced by the presumed dusty material at radii of 352, 344 and 316 kilometers, between 100 and 130 kilometers above the object’s surface.

Conclusions about Chiron’s rings

Before Chiron, little was known about the origin and formation of rings around small celestial bodies, but now the subject has become decidedly confusing. Everything shows this Material orbiting the Centaur should disperse relatively quickly, without any confinement or replacement mechanism..

In fact, if Chiron had a fixed ring system, it would be one of the few objects in space with this feature. Not to be outdone, the minor planet is probably the only observed object in history with environmental material capable of simulating the existence of rings. but in varying amounts over a short period of time.

An even more recent occultation of Chiron, occurring on December 15, 2022, was recorded by Spanish astronomers at the Kottamia Astronomical Observatory in Egypt. They discovered three symmetrical structures on either side of the Centaur. Two of these disks are narrow and one is wide, forming a large disk with a diameter of 580 kilometers.

Stay up to date with the latest astronomy discoveries at TecMundo. If you wish, you can also learn about the rare astronomical phenomenon that hides the star Betelgeuse.