A few years ago, astronomers believed that only large planets in the Solar system possess ring systems. Thunder in 2014, when 250-kilometrovogo asteroid Chariklo there were two rings with width of about 7 and 3 kilometers separated devyatikilometrovy slit. Next year, there is evidence that a couple of the rings have a 220 kilometre of Chiron.
Chiron and Chariklo in common is that they are centaurs. The so called group of asteroids whose orbits lie between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. Chiron and Chariklo their largest representatives.
The name centaurs chosen to refer to them not by chance. These objects are called the small planets (in common with asteroids), but their characteristics are rather close to the asteroids that hang out between Mars and Jupiter, and the bodies of the Kuiper belt.
For example, Chiron in passing they recorded perihelion coma like comets. Based on this, astronomers believe that centaurs have migrated into the Solar system from the Kuiper belt, and it happened relatively recently — on the basis of the General instability of their orbits, we are talking about millions of years.
The centaurs are shown in orange color, green — Kuiper belt objects
A group of scientists from Japan and France have constructed a model explaining the appearance of the rings of the centaurs in their origin. According to calculations, during the migration some of these bodies (up to 10% of the population) had to pass at a small distance from the gas giants is so small that they would have been exposed to their tidal forces.
The large bodies, the depths of which was differentsirovki (i.e. they have a rocky core surrounded by an icy mantle), this convergence would lead to the fact that gravity giants would have ripped the surface of the ice substance. Some of it of course would be ejected into the surrounding space, and some would remain in orbit around the remainder of the body, and formed a ring around him. So if this theory is correct, part of the other centaurs also have to give us a ring.
