DWARF HAUMEA HAS RINGS

Rings have been seen around the dwarf planet Haumea. Astronomers watching the world as it passed in front of a distant star, noticed that the star’s light dipped slightly before and after the main event, hinting at additional structure around the dwarf planet. “The analysis shows that these dips are explained by a narrow and dense ring around Haumea that absorbed about half of the incoming stellar flux,” says Ulrich Hopp from the Max Planck Institute of Extraterrestrial Physics, who led the observations.