More Evidence That Mars Once Had a Ring - and Will Again

[Judi Lynn]

By George Dvorsky on 03 Jun 2020 at 4:30PM

New research offers an explanation for the unusual orbit of Mars’ moon Deimos, one that bolsters the hypothesis that the Red Planet periodically features a Saturn-like ring.

Mars has two very ugly moons, Phobos and Deimos. In addition to their potato-like appearance, both moons have exceptionally circular orbits aligned above Mars’s equatorial plane. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate, as Deimos, the outer of the two moons, sits slightly outside this plane.

As it turns out, this slight, two-degree difference is more important than we realised, according to new research presented this week at the 236th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, which was held virtually this year. You can read the pre-print here; the paper was accepted for publication in a future edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“The fact that Deimos’s orbit is not exactly in plane with Mars’s equator was considered unimportant, and nobody cared to try to explain it,” said Matija Ćuk, the lead author of the new study and a research scientist at the SETI Institute, in a press release. “But once we had a big new idea and we looked at it with new eyes, Deimos’s orbital tilt revealed its big secret.”

More:
https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2020/06/more-evidence-that-mars-once-had-a-ring-and-will-again/

[tblue37]

1. K&R and thanks. nt

[Baked Potato]

2. Thanks...

[Karadeniz]

3. So much to learn! Thanks!