In a universe where change usually unfolds over eons, astronomers have gotten a rare front-row seat to watch a small, icy world beyond Saturn build a brand-new set of rings in real time.
A team of Brazil-based astronomers found that the bands of material orbiting around (2060) Chiron, a 125-mile-wide (200 kilometers wide) object that circles the sun between Saturn and Uranus, are new and still taking shape. The findings suggest that Chiron's surroundings are in a transitional state somewhere between a chaotic cloud of debris and a fully formed ring system, offering scientists a rare snapshot of ring formation in progress, which has never been directly witnessed before.
