10199 Chariklo
asteroid
10199 Chariklo ( KARR-ə-kloh) is a ringed asteroid and centaur in the outer Solar System. It is the largest known centaur, with a diameter of about 250 km (160 mi). It orbits the Sun between Saturn and Uranus with an orbital period of 62.5 years. It was discovered on 15 February 1997 by the University of Arizona's Spacewatch project at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Chariklo has a dark, reddish surface composed of water ice, silicate minerals, amorphous carbon, and various complex organic compounds (also known as tholins).
Chariklo's ring system consists of two narrow rings of icy particles in orbit around the object. The rings of Chariklo were discovered in 2013, when astronomers observed Chariklo occulting or passing in front of a star. Chariklo was the first minor planet discovered to have rings, and as of 2025, it is one of the four minor planets known to have rings (the three others being 2060 Chiron, Haumea, and Quaoar). It is unknown what keeps Chariklo's rings stable, as it has been predicted that they should decay within a few million years. Astronomers have hypothesized that Chariklo's rings might be maintained by the gravitational influence of yet-undiscovered shepherd moons orbiting Chariklo.
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This entry incorporates text from “10199 Chariklo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.