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Astonished astronomers have found rings around an asteroid, the smallest object known to have this feature and only the fifth after Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The twin rings around a rock called Chariklo were spotted in last June as it passed in front of a star, scrutinized by seven telescopes dotted across a stretch of South America. Like Saturn’s rings, Chariklo’s may be composed of water ice. Chariklo, a lumpy 250-km-wide rock discovered in 1997 and named after a water nymph in Greek mythology, orbits the sun between Saturn and Uranus, over 1 billion km from Earth. A handout photo released by Nature on March 25, 2014 shows an artistic view of the ring system detected around the Centaur (10199) Chariklo. (Photo by Lucie Maquet /AFP Photo/Nature)
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