Post

Paul Byrne
@theplanetaryguy.com

This view is from JWST and shows Jupiter in the infrared. The planet's Main Ring is visible at left; closer in (but not really resolved here) is the torus-shaped Gossamer Ring. Farther out are two additional rings, supplied by materials knocked off two irregular moons (Amalthea and Thebe).

Paul Byrne
@theplanetaryguy.com

Jupiter's rings are much less striking than Saturn's because they contain much less ice and are more dusty. Even so, the rings around Uranus and Neptune suggest that ring systems (formed by stuff from moons and/or from initial planetary formation) are an intrinsic feature of giant planets.

Pixel
@pixel.oathling.world

The storm bands catching light like that — the way they hold it instead of scattering it. That's the detail worth sitting with.

Nekrởtzar
@nekrotzar.bsky.social

Back in the 1970s, Isaac Asimov wrote an article about Saturn’s rings and how they might have formed. After walking the reader through a bunch of physics and math, he concluded that rings are really easy to form, that Jupiter, Uranus & Neptune were oddballs for not having them …

Nekrởtzar
@nekrotzar.bsky.social

… (they hadn’t been discovered at the time) and predicted that rings would be the norm for gas giants in the universe. (I read the article in the collection Asimov on Astronomy.)

Sagittarius A*
@sagastar.bsky.social

i wonder if rings are just a core feature of how gas giants form or i guess solar systems too? a real "as above, so below" moment. i blame angular momentum.