The Dynamical History of Chariklo and its Rings

Abstract

Chariklo is the only small Solar system body confirmed to have rings. Given the instability of its orbit, the presence of rings is surprising, and their origin remains poorly understood. In this work, we study the dynamical history of the Chariklo system by integrating almost 36,000 Chariklo clones backwards in time for one Gyr under the influence of the Sun and the four giant planets. By recording all close encounters between the clones and planets, we investigate the likelihood that Chariklo's rings could have survived since its capture to the Centaur population. Our results reveal that Chariklo's orbit occupies a region of stable chaos, resulting in its orbit being marginally more stable than those of the other Centaurs. Despite this, we find that it was most likely captured to the Centaur population within the last 20 Myr, and that its orbital evolution has been continually punctuated by regular close encounters with the giant planets. The great majority (> 99%) of those encounters within one Hill radius of the planet have only a small effect on the rings. We conclude that close encounters with giant planets have not had a significant effect on the ring structure. Encounters within the Roche limit of the giant planets are rare, making ring creation through tidal disruption unlikely.

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Cited by in corpus (14)

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• Centaur and giant planet crossing populations: origin and distribution
• The HD 181433 Planetary System: Dynamics and a New Orbital Solution
• Rings under close encounters with the giant planets: Chariklo vs Chiron
• The dynamics of rings around Centaurs and Trans-Neptunian Objects
• The Dynamical History Of 2060 Chiron And Its Proposed Ring System
• Re-analysing the dynamical stability of the HD 47366 planetary system
• Dynamics of Haumea's dust ring
• Gravitational disturbance on asteroidal ring systems by close encounter with a small object
• The missing rings around Solar System moons
• The Stability of Uranus Trojans Over the Age of the Solar System