For decades, astronomers thought rings were something only giant planets had.
In a recent study, Santos-Sanz and his colleagues used the James Webb Space Telescope to watch the same body, now known as Chariklo, pass in front of a background star again.
The occultation came on October 18, 2022.
JWST recorded the event simultaneously in two near-infrared bands, at 1.5 and 3.2 micrometers, which made it the first time anyone has caught a body’s rings in a band beyond three micrometers—a range Earth’s atmosphere puts out of reach for ground telescopes.
Rings are now known around another body from the same category as Chariklo, called Chiron, the dwarf planet Haumea, and the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar.
5 sentences from our version of the report,
chosen to cover it. Nothing here is written; every line is in the article below.
How
Summarized version
Understanding how rings around small bodies evolve over time, he explains, matters.
Headline check
Headline as published: Rings around a tiny body have changed over the past decade
There is nothing in this headline a machine can check against the report: no figure, no name and no quotation.
For decades, astronomers thought rings were something only giant planets had. “It was a surprise,” says Pablo Santos-Sanz, an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucían in Granada, Spain. Ever since, the question has been what such rings are made of and how long they can last.
In a recent study, Santos-Sanz and his colleagues used the James Webb Space Telescope to watch the same body, now known as Chariklo, pass in front of a background star again.
His team identified a possible Chariklo occultation in August 2022 and redid the prediction every week. Between the first prediction and one of the last, the projected line of sight shifted by about 110 kilometers, which was enough to move it off the body.
The occultation came on October 18, 2022. The reconstructed geometry shows JWST’s sightline to the background star skimmed 7.4 kilometers above Chariklo’s surface, missing the body but catching its rings.
JWST recorded the event simultaneously in two near-infrared bands, at 1.5 and 3.2 micrometers, which made it the first time anyone has caught a body’s rings in a band beyond three micrometers—a range Earth’s atmosphere puts out of reach for ground telescopes.
Reproducing an opacity as high as JWST recorded came out at a roughly 1 in a 1,000 chance at 1.5 micrometers, and 4 in 100,000 at 3.2 micrometers for a single measurement.
Rings are now known around another body from the same category as Chariklo, called Chiron, the dwarf planet Haumea, and the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar.
Shortened to 1 minute
of reading, this version reads 11 on the Niral Score.
You are reading our version, not theirs.
This is Ars Technica's report shortened to its most important sentences, in plainer words, with
verdicts and loaded words taken out. Plain description stays, and so do adjectives
that carry a fact, such as "former" or "federal". The reporting, the facts and the quotations
are theirs — quotations are never edited — and the indicators beside it measure
this version. Hover or tap Adjectives to see every one left in the text.
How this outlet filed it, and how we rewrote it
No other newsroom we read has filed on this event, so there is nothing to compare it with yet.
Readers can ask a question about this story here.
Questions and answers are for subscribers.
Sign in
to read them.
Comments are read before they appear where anything in them needs a person to look.
Nothing posted here is ever deleted; a comment taken down keeps its text and the reason,
so the decision can be looked at again. How this works
