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Do all planets have rings around them?
Question Date: 2020-05-11
Answer 1:

In short, no, not all planets have rings around them. In our solar system, the planets with rings are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

According to planets with rings, the minor planet Chariklo also has rings. Chariklo is part of the Asteroid Belt, a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where many small, rocky objects orbit the sun. It is called a minor planet because of its rings. In order to be a full planet, Chariklo would need to have cleared the area around it of smaller objects by pulling them in with its gravity until they either collided with it or ended up orbiting it.

Today, the rings of Saturn are the largest in the solar system, but it is believed that rings change over time. At one point, Jupiter's, Uranus's, and Neptune's rings could have been the biggest ones. One more interesting fact is that, unlike other planets, Uranus is tipped on its side, so that its north pole faces the sun and its south pole faces away from the sun, but like other planets, it rotates about an axis between its two poles. Its rings orbit it in the same direction that it rotates, so to us, it looks as though they orbit from the bottom to the top of the planet, instead of from the left to the right like on Saturn.

Thanks,


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