
How do planets get rings?
Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe
00:00
Could There Be Rings Around Planets?
The way we detect planets around other stars, or one way at least, is the transit method. We get a sense of the size because of how much light is blocked from the star. And so if the planet seems to be really, really large, there's like this extra reduction in the light of the star because it has like big fluffy things around it. That might be evidence for rings around the planet. If it seems like bigger than we would otherwise expect it to be from its mass and from its orbit. So if the orbit doesn't match how fluffy it looks, how much light it blocks, that may be a sign of a ring.
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