Chariklo’s rings are changing before our eyes

Chariklo, the largest known Centaur in the Solar System, is surrounded by two narrow rings discovered in 2013 during a stellar occultation. A new observation with the James Webb Space Telescope shows that these rings are not frozen in time : their positions remain broadly stable, but their properties are changing. The inner ring, C1R, now appears more opaque, while the outer ring, C2R, shows a much weaker signal. These results suggest that small ring systems may be far more dynamic than previously thought, shaped by material exchange or loss, collisions, and resonant effects that remain to be understood. Published in Science Advances, the study involves Damya Souami at LIRA, together with Bruno Sicardy and Josselin Desmars at LTE, within the ANR Roche and ERC Lucky Star projects.