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How many narrow rings surround Uranus?
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Uranus
Two views of the southern hemisphere of Uranus, produced from images obtained by Voyager 2 on Jan. 17, 1986. In colours visible to the unaided human eye, Uranus is a bland, nearly featureless sphere (left). In a colour-enhanced view processed to bring out low-contrast details, Uranus shows the banded cloud structure common to the four giant planets (right). From the polar perspective of Voyager at the time, the bands appear concentric around the planet's rotational axis, which is pointing nearly toward the Sun. Small ring-shaped features in the right image are artifacts arising from dust in the spacecraft's camera.
Uranus is surrounded by at least 10 narrow rings. While initial observations from Earth identified five rings, subsequent observations and the Voyager 2 mission confirmed a total of 10, with indications that others may exist.12
These rings, listed in order of increasing distance from the planet, are named 6, 5, 4, Alpha, Beta, Eta, Gamma, Delta, Lambda, and Epsilon. They are characterized as being narrow and fairly opaque, consisting of large particles and some microscopic dust.2