Opposite Ways

Chariklo — Centaur between Saturn and Uranus, about two hundred fifty kilometers across, two rings found in twenty thirteen.

Santos-Sanz used JWST for a stellar occultation on eighteen October twenty twenty-two.

Against a decade of ground occultations the rings moved opposite ways: inner C1R about fifty percent more opaque; outer C2R about sixty percent weaker since twenty seventeen.

Cause still open — true change in a few years, filter or wavelength, or both.

Small-body rings were taken as stable. This one thickens one band while the other thins. Outer may be transient, or dusty — nought two to nought five micrometre silicates.

Dynamic system is a late mouth. Looking is the two drifts going opposite, and the outer losing what the inner keeps.

Stable ring is the old picture that no longer sits.

The leftover is both: the two drifts going opposite ways, and the outer one losing what the inner keeps.