An Asteroid with Rings

An unexpected discovery has been made by observers at telescopes in South America. They have made the surprise discovery that the remote asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by two dense and narrow rings.  The much larger planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have this feature but Chariklo is the smallest object to have rings and only the fifth body in the Solar System . The origin of these rings remains a mystery, but they may be the result of a collision that created a disc of debris.