The rings around Uranus have mystified astronomers for almost half a century. Now, thanks to a combination of ground- and space-based telescopic observations, scientists think they’ve worked out where two of these rings came from.
A blue-tinged ring, named Mu, seems to be made of icy shards knocked off a nearby moon by micrometeorite impacts, researchers report in the April Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets. Conversely, Nu, a reddish ring, is composed of rocky particles probably sourced in a similar manner from an unseen rocky moon or moons.
Ring systems — like those around Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune — can form in myriad ways, including through moon-on-moon collisions or from a moon being ripped apart by the planet’s gravity. But for Uranus, it seems that “impacts have played a huge role, and still play a role,” says Imke de Pater, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley.
Read the full article here: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/uranus-rings-origin-mu-moon-mab