  Rings around exoplanets (exorings) are one of the most expected discoveries
in exoplanetary research. There is an increasing number of theoretical and
observational efforts for detecting exorings, but none of them have succeeded
yet. Most of those methods focus on the photometric signatures of exorings
during transits, whereas less attention has been paid to light diffusely
reflected: what we denote here as the bright side of the light curve. This is
particularly important when we cannot detect the typical stellar flux drop
produced by transiting exoplanets. Here, we endeavour to develop a general
method to model the variations on the light curves of both ringed
non-transiting and transiting exoplanets. Our model (dubbed as Pryngles)
simulates the complex interaction of luminous, opaque, and semitransparent
objects in planetary systems, discretizing their surface with small circular
plane discs that resemble sequins or spangles. We perform several numerical
experiments with this model, and show its incredible potential to describe the
light curve of complex systems under various orbital, planetary, and
observational configurations of planets, moons, rings, or discs. As our model
uses a very general approach, we can capture effects like shadows or
planetary/ring shine, and since the model is also modular we can easily
integrate arbitrarily complex physics of planetary light scattering. A
comparison against existing tools and analytical models of reflected light
reveals that our model, despite its novel features, reliably reproduces light
curves under common circumstances. Pryngles source code is written in PYTHON
and made publicly available.
