Ring toss-up 17 april 2007 sciencenow.org

Did famed astronomer William Herschel see the elusive rings of Uranus almost 2 centuries before they were discovered in 1977? Perhaps, astronomers reported 16 April at the Royal Astronomy Society National Astronomy Meeting in Preston. U.K. Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, and within a decade or so, he described a faint ring circling the planet. According to the team, Herschel had the size, the angle, and the color right, but skeptics note that even today's largest telescopes can only resolve the rings in infrared.

© Govert Schilling