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Dust from Pluto's satellites ought to form a faint ring around the dwarf planet, according to new calculations Until recently, the only ring in the Solar System was Saturn's. But in 1960s and 70s, astronomers discovered rings around Uranus and Neptune. Meanwhile, the Voyager 1spacecraft sent back images of Jupiter's ring. To be sure, these rings are much less impressive than Saturn's but the implications are clear: rings seem much more common than astronomers once thought. Perhaps they are even the norm. And that raises an interesting question: could Pluto possibly have a ring? The observational evidence is that Pluto...

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite – temporarily designated P4 -- popped up in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet. The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km). "I find it remarkable...

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a fourth moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto. The tiny, new satellite -- temporarily designated P4 -- was uncovered in a Hubble survey searching for rings around the dwarf planet. The new moon is the smallest discovered around Pluto. It has an estimated diameter of 8 to 21 miles (13 to 34 km). By comparison, Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is 648 miles (1,043 km) across, and the other moons, Nix and Hydra, are in the range of 20 to 70 miles in diameter (32 to 113 km). "I find it remarkable that...

There is something around the moon of Rhea. It's not a ring, and it sure is weird, say researchers.Back in 2005, a suite of six instruments on the Cassini spacecraft detected what was thought to be an extensive debris disk around Saturn's moon Rhea, and while there was no visible evidence, researchers thought that perhaps there was a diffuse ring around the moon. This would have been the first ring ever found around a moon. New observations, however, have nixed the idea of a ring, but there's still something around Rhea that is causing a strange, symmetrical structure in the...

NASA scientists have discovered a mysterious ribbon around our solar system —- a stripe made of hydrogen —- that defies all current expectations about what the edge of the solar system might look like. Richard Fisher, the director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, tells NPR's Guy Raz that this discovery is a big moment for the scientific community. "We thought we knew everything about everything, and it turned out that there were unknown unknowns."

Oct 7, 2009 — Saturn has a newly-discovered ring to add to its decor – the largest of all. It’s so big, it makes Saturn look like a speck in the middle of it. The ring, located at the orbit of the small outer moon Phoebe, is inclined 27 degrees and revolves backwards around Saturn. This was announced today by...

University of Arizona scientists have uncovered a curious case of missing asteroids. The main asteroid belt is a zone containing millions of rocky objects between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The scientists find that there ought to be more asteroids there than researchers observe. The missing asteroids may be evidence of an event that took place about 4 billion years ago, when the solar system's giant planets migrated to their present locations. UA planetary sciences graduate student David A. Minton and UA planetary sciences professor Renu Malhotra say missing asteroids is an important piece of evidence to support an...

What happened to Saturn's rings? Amateur astronomers have noticed something different when they peer through their telescopes recently. "The rings have narrowed considerably in the last year," one said. "The Cassini division (a dark gap in the rings) is getting hard to see."

  Edge-on image of Saturn's F-ring. Credit: NASA/JPL Cassini-Huygens mission.   Nov 12, 2007Kinks in Saturn's RingsBraids and twists in the rings of Saturn suggest activity in addition to gravitational attraction. Could electricity be one of the formative agents? Saturn's F-ring was discovered by Pioneer 11 during its 1979 flyby of the giant planet. When the Voyager 1 space probe passed by Saturn in November of 1980, it returned stunning pictures of Saturn's rings that were completely unanticipated. Two of the most intriguing discoveries were the "spokes" seen drifting above the ring plane and the twisted and interlaced structure...

Neptune is the planet farthest from the Sun (Pluto is now considered only a dwarf planet), Neptune is the planet farthest from the Earth, and to our knowledge, there has been absolutely no industrialization out at Neptune in recent centuries. There has been no recent build-up of greenhouse gases there, no deforestation, no rapid urbanization, no increase in contrails from jet airplanes, and no increase in ozone in the low atmosphere; recent changes at Neptune could never be blamed on any human influence. Incredibly, an article has appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters showing a stunning relationship...

LOS ANGELES - Saturn's majestic ring system, visible through backyard telescopes, just got a little more crowded with the discovery of a faint, new ring encircling the giant planet, scientists said Tuesday. The international Cassini spacecraft beamed back images this week showing the new ring, located inside the outermost E ring. The new ring crosses the orbits of the Saturn moons Janus and Epimetheus, leading scientists to believe tiny particles from the lunar surfaces gave rise to the ring. Saturn has seven major rings named A through G, although they are not arrayed in alphabetical order. The planet has about...

The two moons discovered around Pluto last year were likely formed from the same giant impact that created the planet’s much larger satellite, Charon, scientists say. The idea suggests that other Kuiper Belt Objects might also harbor multiple satellites and raises the possibility that Pluto is encircled by rings fashioned from debris ejected from the surface of the tiny moons. The two moons, called P1 and P2 for now, were discovered in May 2005 using the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists now think the two moons are roughly 37 and 31 miles (60 and 50 km) in diameter. Charon has an...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - New observations by the international Cassini spacecraft reveal that Saturn's trademark shimmering rings, which have dazzled astronomers since Galileo's time, have dramatically changed over just the past 25 years. Among the most surprising findings is that parts of Saturn's innermost ring - the D ring - have grown dimmer since the Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1981, and a piece of the D ring has moved 125 miles inward toward Saturn. While scientists puzzle over what caused the changes, their observations could reveal something about the age and lifetime of the rings. Cassini-related discoveries...

Astronomers have discovered 12 new moons orbiting Saturn, bringing its number of natural satellites to 46.The moons are small, irregular bodies - probably only about 3-7km in size - that are far from Saturn and take about two years to complete one orbit. All but one circles Saturn in the opposite direction to its larger moons - a characteristic of captured bodies. Jupiter is the planet with the most moons, 63 at the last count. Saturn now has 46. Uranus has 27 and Neptune 13. The latest ones were found last year using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii. Confirmation...

from the January 29, 2004 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0129/p14s02-stss.html Another giant leapScientists around the world are eyeing the moon as a future research lab and a gateway to space exploration, while companies look at commercial prospects.By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor It's been dubbed Earth's attic, a keystone for understanding the early history of the inner planets, and even a potential safe-deposit box for evidence of life early in the solar system's history. By whatever label, the moon's star appears to be rising. Even before President Bush unveiled his space policy earlier this month,...

Video here.

Well, not old to me anyway...Some of these had me on the floor. If you use Internet Explorer only and don't get this one, find a new browser...PLEASE...it's by far the worst browser EVER (ask any web developer). I already posted this one, but I'm throwing it in again for good measure!

Revelation 6:14 Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. Everyone has seen pictures of the planet Saturn and its beautiful rings. Well, it is now known that many of our solar system's outer planets have rings. However, these rings are a problem for those astronomers who think that the universe is billions of years old. You see, the rings, which encircle the outer planets, would not be around today if the universe really was billions of years old. Recent studies of the rings of...

Is it my imagination (Alzheimers?) or did NBC primetime coverage omit the rings competition? While doing a search I found photos of men on the apparatus, but I can't remember seeing it covered at all. Did they show it for 5 mins and skip the rest of it? Very curious. Thank you

One of two nurses' assistants charged in the thefts of wedding bands from ailing, elderly veterans pleaded guilty today in Roanoke Circuit Court to eight felonies. Ashley Michelle Sweeney, 23, of Ferrum admitted that in January she accepted rings taken from four patients at the Virginia Veterans Care Center on Shenandoah Avenue in northwest Roanoke. She also admitted selling them at two pawn shops along Williamson Road. Judge Clifford Weckstein found Sweeney guilty of four counts each of receiving and selling stolen property, offenses that carry a combined maximum penalty of 120 years in prison. She will be sentenced at...