Rings of Neptune 1846 when William Lassell, the discoverer of Neptune's largest moon, Triton, thought he had seen a ring around the planet. However, his claim was never confirmed and it is likely that it was an observational artifact. The first reliable detection of a ring was made in 1968 by stellar occultation, although that result would go unnoticed until 1977 when the rings of Uranus were discovered. Soon after the Uranus discovery, a team from Villanova University led by Harold J. Reitsema began searching for rings around Neptune. On 24 May 1981, they detected a dip in a star's brightness during one
Fictional planets of the Solar System Fictional planets of the Solar System The fictional portrayal of our Solar System has often included planets, moons, and other celestial objects which do not actually exist in reality. Some of these objects were, at one time, seriously considered as hypothetical planets which were either thought to have been observed, or were hypothesized in order to explain certain celestial phenomena. Often such objects continued to be used in literature long after the hypotheses upon which they were based had been abandoned. Other non-existent Solar System objects used in fiction have been proposed or hypothesized by persons with no scientific standing,