Implications of cigar-shaped bodies having rings?
In my Conworld's system, There is a porous asteroid large enough to be a dwarf planet (but it's mass is too small to pull it into a spherical shape) that has rings. How they got there, nobody knows. But could they have a prolonged orbit around the body without interference, unless from another asteroid?
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Yup! This is possible, and a number of small bodies in the Solar System have rings:
- Haumea, a dwarf planet in the outer Solar System, was recently discovered to have rings, which lie inside its Roche limit.
- Chariklo, a very large asteroid, has two known rings.
- Chiron, another minor planet, is suspected to have rings, but these have not been confirmed.
Minor planets orbit far away from each other and have such weak gravitational fields that they are unlikely to destabilize each other, barring an extreme close encounter.
These rings will eventually dissipate, as all rings do. Viscous spreading is one culprit, and for these minor planets, the effect may be more pronounced because of the nonexistence of shepherd moons around these bodies. In at least Haumea's case, an orbital resonance provides short-term stability, but not long-term stability.
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