An Unexpected Ring Around Dwarf Planet Quaoar

[Waspie_Dwarf]

ESA’s Cheops finds an unexpected ring around dwarf planet Quaoar

Quote

During a break from looking at planets around other stars, ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (Cheops) mission has observed a dwarf planet in our own Solar System and made a decisive contribution to the discovery of a dense ring of material around it.

The dwarf planet is known as Quaoar. The presence of a ring at a distance of almost seven and a half times the radius of Quaoar, opens up a mystery for astronomers to solve: why has this material not coalesced into a small moon?

Read More: ESA

 

[Alchopwn]

I didn't know there were dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt, let alone one called Quaoar (A somewhat mis-spelled imo deity name from the Californian Uto-Aztec language Tongva), let alone that Quaoar itself had a ring.  All a bit amazing.  I feel as if this is the new fact I learned today. Thanks Waspie-Dwarf.

[fred_mc]

10 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

I didn't know there were dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt, let alone one called Quaoar (A somewhat mis-spelled imo deity name from the Californian Uto-Aztec language Tongva), let alone that Quaoar itself had a ring.  All a bit amazing.  I feel as if this is the new fact I learned today. Thanks Waspie-Dwarf.

There are several dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt. Other examples are Sedna and Eris, and Pluto is also a Kuiper belt dwarf planet.

[Alchopwn]

2 minutes ago, fred_mc said:

There are several dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt. Other examples are Sedna and Eris, and Pluto is also a Kuiper belt dwarf planet.

Really?  Pluto and Eris are in the Kuiper Belt?  I thought they were just outermost orbits of the Solar System.  Have I been alseep?  What else did I miss?

[fred_mc]

17 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

Really?  Pluto and Eris are in the Kuiper Belt?  I thought they were just outermost orbits of the Solar System.  Have I been alseep?  What else did I miss?

Yes, you can read about it here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt . Now I actually just read on that Wikipedia page that Neptune's moon Triton, which is bigger than Pluto, is probably a captured Kuiper belt object. Interesting, I didn't know that.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

13 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

Really?  Pluto and Eris are in the Kuiper Belt?

It's one of the main reasons that Pluto was re-designated from planet to dwarf planet, because it was just one of potentially dozens or even hundreds of such objects in the Kuiper Belt.

 

17 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

  I thought they were just outermost orbits of the Solar System.

They aren't even close to the outer edge of the solar system.

Way beyond the Kuiper Belt is a roughly spherical region of millions of comet like objects called the Oort Cloud. The Kuiper Belt extends from just outside Neptune's orbit at about 30 AU to around 50 AU. The Oort cloud stars at about 2,000 AU and extends maybe as far as 200,000 AU... which is more than ¾ of the way to Alpha Centauri,