Does Pluto Have Rings?

Saturn has rings and Jupiter has rings. Does Pluto have rings? Astronomers have no idea. Pluto is so far away that it’s impossible to get a clear view of Pluto from here on Earth.

You can also look through these books from Amazon.com if you want more information about Pluto.

But scientists think that it’s possible that Pluto does have rings. This idea comes from the fact that Pluto has two tiny moons, Nix and Hydra. They’re just a few km across, and have very little gravity. So any micrometeoroid impacts on these moons will kick up material into orbit around Pluto.

Instead of falling back down onto the moons, this impact material would drift into rings around Pluto. Astronomers think it could actually survive for up to 100,000 years. This is a similar process that creates some of the rings around Saturn and Jupiter.

If this is true, it would constitute the first set of rings around a solid object (in this case a dwarf planet), rather than a gas giant planet.

When NASA’s New Horizons mission arrives at Pluto in 2015, it might be able to detect these faint rings, and confirm the theory.

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay. Here's a link to my Mastodon account.

Recent Posts

We Understand Rotating Black Holes Even Less Than We Thought

The theory of black holes has several mathematical oddities. Recent research shows our understanding of…

4 hours ago

Habitable Worlds are Found in Safe Places

When we think of exoplanets that may be able to support life, we hone in…

4 hours ago

New Glenn Booster Moves to Launch Complex 36

Nine years ago, Blue Origin revealed the plans for their New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift…

4 hours ago

How Many Additional Exoplanets are in Known Systems?

NASA's TESS mission has turned up thousands of exoplanet candidates in almost as many different…

8 hours ago

Hubble and Webb are the Dream Team. Don't Break Them Up

Many people think of the James Webb Space Telescope as a sort of Hubble 2.…

15 hours ago

Scientists Have Figured out why Martian Soil is so Crusty

On November 26th, 2018, NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight)…

23 hours ago