Does Jupiter have rings?

Some sites say Jupiter has rings, others don’t. Does Jupiter have rings?

Asker: ahmed, 11 years old

Answer

In the solar system we know the four rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars), and four gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune). Rings can be found on each of the four large planets, but only on Saturn are they so dense that we can easily see them from Earth with a small telescope. The other three giant planets therefore also have rings, but they are much thinner and were only discovered about 30 years ago by space probes (Voyager 1 and 2) that were sent to those planets. From Earth, these rings can only be seen with the largest telescopes, but the Hubble Space Telescope can see them because it floats outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

So yes, Hupiter has rings, but they are very thin. You can see a photo at:

http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~brown/images/keckring.html

This photo was taken from Earth with the large Keck telescope, in infrared light

Another photo, taken by the Voyager 2 space probe, can be found here:

https://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/captions/jupiter/jupring.htm

Does Jupiter have rings?

Answered by

prof.dr. Paul Hellings

Department of Mathematics, Fac. IIW, KU Leuven

Catholic University of Leuven
Old Market 13 3000 Leuven
https://www.kuleuven.be/

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