Live coverage: NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrives at Jupiter

Chariklo is the largest confirmed centaur, a minor planet orbiting the Sun between Saturn and Uranus. In 2014, two rings were discovered around Chariklo. Soon after, scientists discovered that rings likely exist around another centaur, Chiron, but the origin of these rings remained a mystery — until now.

Researchers at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Queen’s University in Canada have unravelled the mystery of how Jupiter and Saturn likely formed using computer simulations. The discovery, which changes our view of how all planets might have formed, also suggests that the gas giants in the solar system probably formed before the terrestrial planets.

Finding figures and other shapes in overhead clouds is a familiar pastime on Earth, but on Jupiter? An image from the Juno orbiter features a cloud formation that looks remarkably like a dolphin swimming through the giant planet’s turbulent atmosphere.