Rings of Jupiter Rings of Jupiter The planet Jupiter has a system of rings known as the rings of Jupiter or the Jovian ring system. It was the third ring system to be discovered in the Solar System, after those of Saturn and Uranus. It was first observed in 1979 by the "Voyager 1" space probe and thoroughly investigated in the 1990s by the "Galileo" orbiter. It has also been observed by the Hubble Space Telescope and from Earth for several years. Ground-based observations of the rings require the largest available telescopes. The Jovian ring system is faint and consists mainly of dust.
Formation and evolution of the Solar System many planetary scientists think that the Solar System might have looked very different after its initial formation: several objects at least as massive as Mercury were present in the inner Solar System, the outer Solar System was much more compact than it is now, and the Kuiper belt was much closer to the Sun. At the end of the planetary formation epoch the inner Solar System was populated by 50–100 Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos. Further growth was possible only because these bodies collided and merged, which took less than 100 million years. These objects would have gravitationally interacted with