Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Astronomers Discover the First Ring Around a Moon | Solar System | DISCOVER Magazine

Astronomers Discover the First Ring Around a Moon "For more than 300 years we thought Saturn was the only body in the solar system with rings. But by 1989, after ground-based measurements and flybys from Voyagers 1 and 2, we had discovered rings around the other three gas giants—Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune. Now the Cassini spacecraft appears to have found a ring system around Saturn’s second-largest moon, Rhea. The discovery took astronomers by surprise. Just what is a ring doing around a moon, especially one that is significantly smaller than our own?" Here's the press release.

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