• Question: why do some planets have rings around them

    Asked by DJSCallumJ to Stephen, Lucy, Hannah on 10 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by karmelita_m_DJS, 364spah24, DJSFREYA.
    • Photo: Lucy Kissick

      Lucy Kissick answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      This is a really great question and not my speciality (ask Phil I think), but my understanding is that rings can form in a lot of different ways. Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune’s rings might have formed by a moon that got too close to the planet and was ripped apart by its gravity (Mars’s moon Phobos will do this one day, and Mars will get a ring!). Jupiter’s rings form from dust coming off two of its moons as they zoom around.

      Moons and asteroids can also have rings though! Saturn’s moon Rhea and the asteroid Chariklo are two other confirmed ringed objects in our solar system.

Comments

  • Photo: Phil

    Phil commented on :

    Most planets will have had rings at some point left from the planet forming time in the disk around the Sun. These then over time clump together and form moons. That why bigger planets have more moons as they had bigger ring systems. It all comes down to gravity and the bigger the planet the bigger the gravity and thus the larger the rings. However, all this happened at the time for all planets why does Saturn have such impressive and large rings now when the others don’t? As Lucy mentioned one idea is that a large moon came to close to Saturn and the gravity pulled it apart into the rings we see now. We are watching as Saturn’s rings still create moons to this day.