Does Venus Have Rings?

Unfortunately, Venus doesn’t have rings. It also doesn’t have any moons; although, Venus might have had a moon in the past, but it probably crashed back into the planet billions of years ago.

For a planet to have rings, it must have formed further out in the Solar System, where water ice would be able to freeze into chunks of ice. It’s too warm around Venus, so that any water would be a gas or liquid. It would either collect into oceans, like Earth, or be pushed out into deeper space by the Sun’s solar wind.

Another way that planets can have rings is when micrometeoroids smash into a small moon. If the moon is really small, like Pluto’s moon Nix, material ejected from the meteoroid impact will just float off into space and form a ring around the planet. There are several moons around Saturn which create rings in this way, and scientists think that Pluto’s moons might form rings in the same way.

Sorry, no rings for Venus.

Fraser Cain

Fraser Cain is the publisher of Universe Today. He's also the co-host of Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay. Here's a link to my Mastodon account.

Recent Posts

Measuring Exoplanetary Magnetospheres with the Square Kilometer Array

Life on Earth would not be possible without food, water, light, a breathable atmosphere and…

11 mins ago

Psyche is Still Sending Data Home at Broadband Speeds

When I heard about this I felt an amused twinge of envy. Over the last…

14 hours ago

Uh oh. Hubble's Having Gyro Problems Again

The Hubble Space Telescope has gone through its share of gyroscopes in its 34-year history…

19 hours ago

Astronomers Will Get Gravitational Wave Alerts Within 30 Seconds

Any event in the cosmos generates gravitational waves, the bigger the event, the more disturbance.…

3 days ago

Next Generation Ion Engines Will Be Extremely Powerful

During the Space Race, scientists in both the United States and the Soviet Union investigated…

3 days ago

Neutron Stars Could be Capturing Primordial Black Holes

The Milky Way has a missing pulsar problem in its core. Astronomers have tried to…

3 days ago