A ring formed outside the ring limits (blue circle) of the celestial body outside Neptune. Courtesy of the Paris Observatory
Quaoar, a celestial body in the dark outside of Neptune, has been found to have unusual rings that cannot be explained by current ring formation theories.
According to the University of Sheffield in the UK and foreign media, an international research team led by Professor Bruno Morgado of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil published the results of observations of rings in Quaoa in the scientific journal Nature.
Quaoah, whose existence was first confirmed in 2002, has been observed as a celestial body with a diameter of about 1,280 km, orbiting the sun with a cycle of 288 years, in the outer periphery, about 6.4 billion km away from the sun.
It has been suggested that such a small celestial body, which is only half of Pluto, which had the status of the ninth planet in the solar system and was demoted to a dwarf planet, has a ring itself, and even that does not fit the ring formation theory.
The research team found the rings in Quaoa using the ultra-sensitive high-speed camera ‘HiPERCAM’ mounted on the ‘Canary Large Telescope’ (GTC) with an aperture of 10.4 m, the world’s largest optical telescope on the island of La Palma.
The rings are so small and faint that they do not show up in direct images of Quaoah.
Instead, when Quaoah passes in front of another star and passes in less than a minute in a “star eclipse” (star eclipse), it unexpectedly catches the starlight shrinking back and forth twice, confirming the existence of a ring around the celestial body.
In the solar system, rings exist on large planets such as Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus, and only two of the smaller celestial bodies, such as Chariklo and Haumea, have been found to exist.
It has been suggested that all of these rings are close enough for the tidal force of celestial bodies to operate, so that the materials forming the rings do not coalesce into satellites (moon) and remain as rings.
It was within the so-called ‘Roche limit’, the maximum distance a ring could exist.
However, the ring found in Quaoah was formed at a place seven times the radius of the celestial body, reaching twice the Roche limit.
Saturn’s central ring, the most prominent in the solar system, forms three times the radius of the planet.
“I didn’t expect to find a new ring in the solar system, and even more so I didn’t expect to find a ring formed so far away from a celestial body that would challenge existing ring theories,” said study co-author Dr Vick Dillon, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Sheffield. “Everyone learns about Saturn’s beautiful rings as a child, and we hope this new discovery will provide a wider insight into ring formation.”
Quaoah is named after the Creator worshiped by the Tongba people, a native of Southern California.
The satellite with a diameter of 74 kilometers was also named ‘Weywot’ after Quaoa’s son.
Regarding the status of the Kuiper Belt celestial object, Quaoah has sufficient qualifications to be classified as a dwarf planet with a round shape due to gravity, but it is only captured as a blurry point even with the highest performance telescope, so no one can say that it is a dwarf planet, the New York Times reported. .