Ring Toss

It's pretty boring in the Kuiper Belt. Most of the activity in the solar system happens closer to the sun, which is why comets take a dive in close every few decades. The critters on the third planet haven't sent many of their funny little robots out your way, and the first two of those didn't even wave when they zipped by.

But Haumea, a dwarf planet more than four and a half billion miles from the sun, has something that those flashy interior worlds don't: A ring. Back in 2017, astronomers watching Haumea pass in front of a star saw evidence of a thin ring of debris that circles it just more than 1,400 miles from its equator. Unfortunately it's not in the path of the New Horizons probe that scanned Pluto and Ultima Thule, so we may have to wait to learn more about the ring and just why this small egg-shaped world has one.

And minus two to the article writer, who takes not just one, but two opportunities to call Pluto a demoted dwarf-planet. Boo.