One of Jupiter’s three rings is actually a ring within a ring, astronomers at Cornell University and the National Optical Astronomy Observatories announced Tuesday.

The astronomers have discovered that Jupiter’s rings are formed as a result of high-speed collisions of interplanetary meteoroids with Jupiter’s inner moons. According to the astronomers, the material seen on the surfaces of the moons resembles that found in the rings.

“In these impacts, the meteoroid is going so fast it buries itself deep in the moon, then vaporizes and explodes, causing debris to be thrown off at such high velocity that it escapes the satellite’s gravitational field,” said Cornell University astronomer Joseph Burns, in a press release.

Because of its large mass, Jupiter has a strong gravitational field. The debris from the impacts are pulled into the ring formations.

“Jupiter will tend to make the dust go into ring orbits,” said Joseph Eitter, manager of Iowa State’s Fick Observatory near Boone. Eitter said he was not surprised to hear about the previously undetected ring.

Eitter said it takes an extremely powerful telescope to see the rings from Earth. He said Earth-based observation of the rings was not done until space probes showed the rings actually existed.

“They never looked at them until they knew they were there,” Eitter said.

A NASA press release explained that the two Voyager spacecraft were the first to give insight as to the structure of Jupiter’s rings. One of the Voyager images seemed to indicate a faint third ring.

New Galileo data shows the ring is actually two rings, both of which consist of microscopic debris from two of the smaller moons, Amalthea and Thebe. It is called the gossamer ring because of its transparent nature.

“For the first time we can see the gossamer-bound dust coming off Amalthea and Thebe, and we now believe it is likely that the main ring comes from Adrastea and Metis [two other Jupiter moons],” Burns said in the press release.

Jupiter is now very visible in the night sky, Eitter said. It can be seen coming up in the east and crossing the southern sky through the night.

“Jupiter has up to four easily visible moons,” Eitter said. However the rings will not be visible with an amateur telescope, he said.

The lines on Jupiter can be seen with an amateur telescope, but the colors are indistinguishable. Eitter said the pictures one generally sees of Jupiter are enhanced images.

“These pictures have had their colors enhanced by a large amount,” he said.