There is a group of asteroids known as Centaurs, billions of kilometers past Saturn’s orbit. The largest of these is Chariklo, a rock of 250 kilometers (160 miles) in diameter , recognized also due to its 2 thin rings.
These two rings were found by stellar occultation, a phenomenon known as “stellar occultation.” Whenever an object passes in front of a distant star, the amount of light decreases. This technique was utilized to study the atmospheres as well as discover moons in the Solar System. Inside Chariklo, Felipe Braga Ribas and collaborators saw five dips, four away from the rings plus one from the asteroid itself.
The scientists have chose to do something similar with JWST , too. And also as luck would have it, a star ended up nearly right behind Chariklo in October last year. They weren’t perfectly aligned, so the rings merely surrounded the star. This was the very first excellent occultation for JWST and went swimmingly last October 22.
“As we delve deeper into the information, we are going to explore if we cleanly solve the 2 rings. By the shapes of rings’ occultation light curves, we additionally will check out the rings’ colors, the sizes, and thickness of the ring particles, and much more. We really hope gain insight into exactly why this small body actually has rings in many, and maybe identify brand new fainter rings,” Pablo Santos Sanz, from Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Granada, said in a statement.
This particular effort is an element of the Guaranteed Time Observations Program 1271 whose principal investigator is Santos Sanz. JWST even examined Chariklo right and was in a position to take notice of the presence of water ice in a crystalline state. This implies the asteroid may be experiencing little collisions, that possibly expose deeper pristine material or maybe trigger crystallization processes. High-energy particles have a tendency to mess with crystalline ice, therefore watching it informs us that something has to be taking place to sometimes develop it once more or even uncover it.
JWST is going to continue to take notice of the object, along with astronomers hope they’ll have the ability to far more clearly distinguish between the efforts of the rings and the asteroid on the composition analysis down the road.
