Short answers, pulled from the story.
The rings of Uranus were definitively discovered on the 10th of March 1977 by astronomers James L. Elliot, Edward W. Dunham, and Jessica Mink using the Kuiper Airborne Observatory. The discovery was accidental; they were observing a stellar occultation to study Uranus's atmosphere when they noticed the star flickered out five times on each side of the planet, revealing a ring system.
Uranus has 13 known rings. Nine were identified by 1977, two more were found in 1986 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft, and a final pair were detected in 2003-2005 by the Hubble Space Telescope. The rings are designated 1986U2R/ζ, 6, 5, 4, α, β, η, γ, δ, λ, ε, ν, and μ in order of increasing distance from the planet.
The rings of Uranus are thought to be composed of a mixture of water ice and dark radiation-processed organic compounds. Their Bond albedo does not exceed 2%, making them darker than the inner moons of Uranus itself. The outer μ ring may consist entirely of very small, submicrometer dust particles, possibly water ice, while the narrow main rings contain larger bodies ranging from 20 cm to 20 m in diameter.
The rings of Uranus are thought to be no more than 600 million years old, making them relatively young in solar system terms. They likely formed from the collisional fragmentation of several moons that once orbited Uranus. The estimated age is partly derived from calculations based on the current distance of shepherd moons Cordelia and Ophelia from the ε ring.
Voyager 2 flew through the Uranian system in January 1986 and discovered two previously unknown rings, the λ ring and 1986U2R, bringing the known total to eleven. It also confirmed the shepherd moons Cordelia and Ophelia flanking the ε ring, resolved fine internal structure in the ε and η rings, and found eleven inner moons. Observations in forward-scattered light revealed unexpected brightness in the λ ring, indicating it contains significant fine dust.
Without some confinement mechanism, the narrow rings of Uranus would spread radially within at most one million years. The leading explanation is gravitational shepherding by pairs of nearby moons. Cordelia and Ophelia are confirmed shepherds for the ε ring, with the inner edge of the ε ring in 24:25 resonance with Cordelia and the outer edge in 14:13 resonance with Ophelia. Shepherd moons have not been identified for most other narrow rings, and no moon larger than 10 km is known near them.