On this day in space: March 10, 1977: Rings of Uranus discovered!

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On March 10, 1977, astronomers discovered rings around Uranus!

On March 10, 1977, astronomers discovered rings around Uranus!

uranus x rays

(Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXO/University College London/W. Dunn et al; Optical: W.M. Keck Observatory)

They did this during a stellar occultation, which means that a background star was passing behind the planet. Seeing how the light from that star changes when it passed through the atmosphere could yield clues about the composition of Uranus.

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To their surprise, the star began to flicker before it was even eclipsed by Uranus. The star disappeared and reappeared five times as it passed behind the rings. At first they believed that Uranus had five rings, but more observations have revealed that it actually has 13 rings.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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