Planetary Ring System

Huge Planetary Ring

A Planetary Ring System is a disc or ring of dust, asteroids, moonlets, and other solid material that specifically orbits a planet. Similar ring systems can be found orbiting other astronomical objects, such as moons and even some stars.

Planetary Rings

Type-9 planetary ring

Planetary rings, once thought unique to the planet Saturn, are now known to exist around all large planets. These rings are not solid objects, but composed of countless particles with sizes from specks of dust to small moons.

All rings lie predominantly within their planet's Roche limit, where tidal forces would destroy a self-gravitating fluid body. They are also within the planet’s magnetosphere, and in the case of Uranus, they are within the upper reaches of the planetary atmosphere.

For each planet, the rings are quite different. Jupiter's ring is thin and composed of dust-like small particles. Saturn's rings are broad, bright, and opaque. Uranus has narrow, dark rings among broad lanes of dust that are invisible from Earth. Neptune's rings include incomplete arcs restricted to a small range of their circumference.

The ringed planets are not just objects of beauty, but complicated physical systems that provide a local laboratory and analogy for other cosmic systems like galaxies and planet-forming disks.

Saturn's planetary ring system is believed to consist of shattered comets, moons and asteroids.

Trivia

• Gaps within a planetary ring can be flown through while in supercruise without causing an emergency drop.

Videos

• File:Elite Dangerous - Alcor
• File:One Moment of Perfect Beauty
• File:Deep in the Black - Episode 11 - Ringed Giants -4K-

Gallery

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  Planetary Ring System
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  Gas Giant Planetary Ring Col 359 Sector MW V D2 62
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  Huge Planetary Ring
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  SRV Scarab driving on a planet with a ring system
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  Ice in a planetary ring
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  Icy rings
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  Beluga Liner and a planetary ring system
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  Type-9 planetary ring
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  Planetary ring and Imperial Clipper
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  Planetary ring system and two Cobras
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  Asp Explorer and planetary ring
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  Adder and a planetary ring
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  Gas giant with a planetary ring and SRV
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  Panther Clipper Mk II in Planetary Ring
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  Caspian Explorer departure from planet
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  Imperial Cutter above planetary ring