Anyone who knows even the basics of the solar system knows that Saturn has rings. Uranus, Jupiter and Uranus also have more modest, less visible ring systems. The fifth object in the solar system is a centaur called Charikio.

A centaur is a class of minor, small, rocky bodies that are a hybrid of comets and asteroids. According to current estimates there are 44,000 such objects in the solar system. Scientists have long believed that centaurs were relatively dormant objects, floating in space until the recent discovery of Charikio’s ring system.

Now a second centaur, Chiron appears to have a ring system as well.

In November of 2011 Chiron passed briefly in front of a bright star, blocking its light. Researchers analyzed the emissions from the star’s light and the shadow created by Chiron. The optical features they observed suggested that the that the object could have a debris disk.

“It’s interesting, because Chiron is a centaur — part of that middle section of the solar system, between Jupiter and Pluto, where we originally weren’t thinking things would be active, but it’s turning out things are quite active,” says Amanda Bosh, a lecturer in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences in a statement.

In 2010, the team started charting the orbit of the centaur as well as nearby stars to find a time when Chiron would pass in front of a star bright enough to detect. The team determined that the time, date and place they were looking for was November 29, 2011.

They reserved time on NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility, on Mauna Kea as well as the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, at Haleakala and waited to get a good look at the minor planet’s fleeting shadow.

There’s an aspect of serendipity to these observations. We need a certain amount of luck, waiting for Chiron to pass in front of a star that is bright enough. Chiron itself is small enough that the event is very short; if you blink, you might miss it,” said Bosh.

The team watched remotely from a lab at MIT for the event which lasted only a few minutes as the telescopes captured the shadow.

When the group analyzed the light, they found sharp features at the beginning and end of the shadow that would not be expected if it were just a simple body. A simple body, a rock floating in space, would have created a straightforward shadow.

Based on the position of the shadow, the sharp features occurred approximately 185 miles on either side of Chiron.

They were similar to features described by James Elliot, then a professor of planetary astronomy and physics at MIT, in 1993 and 1994.

According to the researchers, Chiron could still, as Elliott believed, phave symmetrical jets of gas and dust. However they also hold out the “intriguing possibility” of a ring.

Jessica Ruprecht, of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, says that it’s possible that when objects break up that the debris could be gathered by the gravity of another body, such as a centaur or the material could be leftovers from the formation of the object itself.

“Another possibility involves the history of Chiron’s distance from the sun. Centaurs may have started further out in the solar system and, through gravitational interactions with giant planets, have had their orbits perturbed closer in to the sun. The frozen material that would have been stable out past Pluto is becoming less stable closer in, and can turn into gases that spray dust and material off the surface of a body,” said Ruprecht.

An independent group has combined the researchers data with other observations and concluded that Chiron probably has a ring system however Rupreccht believes that further observations are necessary before the idea can be confirmed.