Thirty-five years ago today — March 10, 1977 — astronomers James L. Elliot, Edward W. Dunham, and Douglas J. Mink confirmed that the planet Uranus has rings around it.
(Voyager 2 image of Uranus’ rings taken on January 22, 1986, from a distance of 2.52 million kilometers. NASA image.)
The Wikipedia entry on Uranus’ rings explains that, according to notes published by the Royal Society in 1797, William Herschel suspected a ring around the planet as early as February 1789. Herschel’s observation and the 1977 observation were both made when Uranus passed in front of a star and occulted the light from it.
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