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A dense ring of the trans-Neptunian object Quaoar outside its Roche limit.

B E MorgadoB SicardyF Braga-RibasJ L OrtizH SaloF VachierJ DesmarsC L PereiraP Santos-SanzR SfairT de SantanaM AssafinR Vieira-MartinsA R Gomes-JúniorG MargotiVikram S DhillonE Fernández-ValenzuelaJ BroughtonJ BradshawR LangersekG Benedetti-RossiDamya SouamiB J HollerM KretlowR C BoufleurJ I B CamargoR DuffardW BeiskerNicolás MoralesJ LecacheuxF L RommelD HeraldW BenzE JehinF JankowskyT R MarshS P LittlefairG BrunoIsabella PaganoAlexis BrandekerA Collier CameronH G FlorénN HaraG OlofssonT G WilsonZouhair BenkhaldounR BusuttilA BurdanovM FerraisD GaultM GillonW HannaS KerrU KolbP NosworthyD SebastianColin SnodgrassJ P TengJ de Wit
Published in: Nature (2023)
Planetary rings are observed not only around giant planets 1 , but also around small bodies such as the Centaur Chariklo 2 and the dwarf planet Haumea 3 . Up to now, all known dense rings were located close enough to their parent bodies, being inside the Roche limit, where tidal forces prevent material with reasonable densities from aggregating into a satellite. Here we report observations of an inhomogeneous ring around the trans-Neptunian body (50000) Quaoar. This trans-Neptunian object has an estimated radius 4 of 555 km and possesses a roughly 80-km satellite 5 (Weywot) that orbits at 24 Quaoar radii 6,7 . The detected ring orbits at 7.4 radii from the central body, which is well outside Quaoar's classical Roche limit, thus indicating that this limit does not always determine where ring material can survive. Our local collisional simulations show that elastic collisions, based on laboratory experiments 8 , can maintain a ring far away from the body. Moreover, Quaoar's ring orbits close to the 1/3 spin-orbit resonance 9 with Quaoar, a property shared by Chariklo's 2,10,11 and Haumea's 3 rings, suggesting that this resonance plays a key role in ring confinement for small bodies.
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