A ring fpr Haumea Options

[MarcF]

Haumea was already weird with its size, shape, color and moons. Now it has also a ring :-)

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v550/...otcallback=true

"Here we report observations from multiple Earth-based observatories of Haumea passing in front of a distant star (a multi-chord stellar occultation). Secondary events observed around the main body of Haumea are consistent with the presence of a ring with an opacity of 0.5, width of 70 kilometres and radius of about 2,287 kilometres. The ring is coplanar with both Haumea’s equator and the orbit of its satellite Hi’iaka. The radius of the ring places it close to the 3:1 mean-motion resonance with Haumea’s spin period..."

Best regards
Marc

[Patteroast]

I'm super surprised. I would have thought the weird torquing non-co-planar orbits of Hi'iaka and Namaka would have made a ring system harder to maintain, not to mention what kind of tidal effects would happen with a non-spherical world! But I admittedly know basically nothing about orbital mechanics.

Another point in favor of Haumea being the TNO I most want to get a spacecraft to in my lifetime.