Astronomers found a ring around a dwarf planet beyond Neptune

The Solar System consists of nine major planets and their moons, but apart of them, there are many other dwarf planets. Recently, a group of astronomers found a dwarf planet surrounded by ring particles beyond the orbit of Neptune and at the edge of the solar system, according to Verge.

The egg-shaped planet is officially considered as a dwarf planet among five dwarf planets, but it is the only planet with its very own ring. The dwarf planet Haumea, with a total distance of 600 miles from pole to pole, was discovered by astronomers in December 2004, Outer Places reported.

How was it discovered?

This is not the first time that astronomers have found an object in the space with a ring around it. Astronomers, who found a ring around Haumea, claimed that they had found two rings around Chariko, a minor planet in Centaurs (a group of minor planets), orbiting Jupiter and Neptune in 2014.

The new discovery led under the supervision of Jose Luis Ortiz, an astronomer at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain. Haumea was observed by researchers when it passed in front of a star known as URAT1 533–182543. They observed it with 12 different telescopes which are situated in 10 different labs across Europe. The observation of the dwarf planet was started in January 2017.

Before this discovery, only four planets in our solar system were considered as ring planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Haumea takes 248 Earth years to complete one rotation around the Sun, a report by Science Alert stated. According to researchers, normally, ring formation can be seen only around the planets with the greater gravitational pull, but Haumea's ring proved them wrong and opened the new aspects in space studies.

What should we know about Haumea?

Researchers said that the ring of Haumea is 43.5 miles wide, it has a radius of about 1,500 miles. One revolution of a ring completes when a dwarf planet spins 3 times on its axis, the Verge reported. The data collected by researchers from telescopes helped them to study the shape, size, and density of Haumea.

The dwarf planet has no atmosphere.

Haumea has two moons which are smaller in size and not much closer to the dwarf planet, according to a planetary astronomer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Amanda Sickafoose. Astronomers believe that rings around the planets may be the dust brought by asteroids or other objects outside the solar system.