A planetary ring is a ring of cosmic dust and other small particles orbiting around a planet in a flat disc-shaped region. The most notable planetary rings known in the Solar System are those around Saturn, but the other three gas giants of the Solar System (Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune) also possess ring systems of their own.
Reports in March 2008 have suggested that the Saturnian moon Rhea may have its own tenuous ring system, which would make it the only moon known to possess a ring system. A later study published in 2010 revealed that imaging of Rhea from the Cassini mission was inconsistent with the predicted properties of the rings, suggesting that some other mechanism is responsible for the magnetic effects that had led to the ring hypothesis.
Read more about Planetary Ring: Overview
Famous quotes containing the words planetary and/or ring:
“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
—Salvador Dali (1904–1989)
“I like well the ring of your last maxim, “It is only the fear of death makes us reason of impossibilities.” And but for fear, death itself is an impossibility.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)