MadSci Network: Astronomy |
Depending on your point of view, our sun does have a ring... or a couple of belts and even a cloud! Because of Jupiter's tremendous tidal forces, no planet formed in the interval between it and Mars. The asteroids form an orbiting ring around our star, although that area is traditionally referred to as the Asteroid Belt. Further out, much further out, the Kuiper Belt of comet nuclei would look like a vast, tenuous ring to a distant alien astronomer. That same obwerver might notice the huge Ort Cloud of cometary nuclei which surrounds our solar system on all sides. Occasionally one of the Kuiper or Ort objects is perturbed and falls through the solar system and we Earthlings observe a comet. Once a great while, one of these comets smashes into a planet, as Shoemaker-Levy did to Jupiter in 1996. Other stars have been observed to have great rings of dust and gas. Check out the NASA web sites for Hubble photos of Beta Pictoris. We think some of the rings around stars may someday form planets and solar systems like ours; according to that theory of planet formation, WE were the rings around our sun long, long ago! Thank you for an exciting question. Keep your eyes on the stars. Jim Foerch James C. Veen Observatory Lowell, Michigan
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Astronomy.