Turns out that not only planets like Saturn can have rings; so can galaxies. At this week’s American Astronomical Society meeting, announcements were made by two separate groups of a donut-shaped ring of ancient stars around the Milky Way. One source of the new data was the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an effort to map in detail one-fourth of the entire sky using the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. A second effort used the 2.5-meter Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands. “When we find large groups of stars formed into rings it’s an indication that at least part of our galaxy was formed by a lot of smaller or dwarf galaxies mixing together,” said researcher Heidi Jo Newberg of the American team. “From afar the Milky Way would be seen to have a red ring around it,” added Rodrigo Ibata member of the European-led team. The ring might be the product of the Milky Way swallowing a smaller “satellite” galaxy, Ibata and his colleagues say. Or perhaps it was created by some disturbance to the galaxy’s main disk, wherein some stars were kicked outward to form the ring. Either way, it presents a puzzle. Earlier studies showed the Milky Way has bullied other smaller galaxies. Astronomers have found evidence that it’s beginning the process of cannibalizing a nearby galaxy known as the Magellanic Cloud. Don’t panic; It’s expected to be a few billion years before the Cloud falls into the Milky Way.