Did JWST find that Chariklo’s rings have changed over the past decade?

Yes. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope watched the ~250-kilometer centaur Chariklo pass in front of a background star and compared that October 2022 occultation with earlier ground-based ring measurements. They found the inner ring (C1R) had become substantially denser, while the outer ring (C2R) had nearly vanished.

Lead author Pablo Santos-Sanz and colleagues argue in Science Advances that the change is most likely real physical evolution of the rings—not just a lucky cut through a denser clump—and that material gain in the inner ring far exceeded what the fading outer ring alone could supply. A still-undetected shepherd moon is one leading hypothesis for replenishing the rings.

Source: Ars Technica — Rings around a tiny body have changed over the past decade (study DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeh4794)

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