The Garden of Learning

Science

Which planet's rings were discovered from Earth in 1977 by stellar occultation?

  • Uranus
  • Neptune
  • Jupiter

The answer is Uranus. The star blinked before and after.

Uranus

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or volatiles. The planet's atmosphere has a complex layered cloud structure and has the lowest minimum temperature of all the Solar System's planets. It has a marked axial tilt of 82.23° with a retrograde rotation period of 17 hours and 14 minutes. This means that in an 84-Earth-year orbital period around the Sun, its poles get around 42 years of continuous sunlight, followed by 42 years of continuous darkness.

Wikipedia · Uranus