Super Saturn

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Saturday, January 31, 2015 22:36
VIEWED: 1860
PAGE 1 of 1

AURAPTOR

Thursday, January 29, 2015 8:33 AM

Astronomers at the Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands, and the University of Rochester, USA, have discovered that the ring system that they see eclipse the very young Sun-like star J1407 is of enormous proportions, much larger and heavier than the ring system of Saturn. The ring system — the first of its kind to be found outside our solar system — was discovered in 2012 by a team led by Rochester’s Eric Mamajek.

A new analysis of the data, led by Leiden’s Matthew Kenworthy, shows that the ring system consists of over 30 rings, each of them tens of millions of kilometers in diameter. Furthermore, they found gaps in the rings, which indicate that satellites (“exomoons”) may have formed. The result has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal.

“The details that we see in the light curve are incredible. The eclipse lasted for several weeks, but you see rapid changes on time scales of tens of minutes as a result of fine structures in the rings,” says Kenworthy. “The star is much too far away to observe the rings directly, but we could make a detailed model based on the rapid brightness variations in the starlight passing through the ring system. If we could replace Saturn’s rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full Moon.”

http://www.fromquarkstoquasars.com/meet-super-saturn-alien-planet-foun
d-staggeringly-large-ring-system/

JONGSSTRAW

Friday, January 30, 2015 7:45 AM

That's pretty amazing. The diameter of those rings is almost as great as our entire solar system. Must have been some gorram giant explosion of some incredibly large body.

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Saturday, January 31, 2015 8:25 AM

Beautiful and incredibly. Thanks for the post.

AURAPTOR

Saturday, January 31, 2015 6:31 PM

Welcome. There seems to be a flurry of really cool astronomy news coming our way of late. From passing asteroids w/ their own moons, the oldest known planetary system in the galaxy, to ....

SIGNYM

Saturday, January 31, 2015 10:02 PM

Wow, awesome.

Nature keeps letting us know we don't know anything yet!

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You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

THGRRI

Saturday, January 31, 2015 10:12 PM

wow wow wow, wow wow wow wow wow

AURAPTOR

Saturday, January 31, 2015 10:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, awesome.

Nature keeps letting us know we don't know anything yet!

Our eyes are just now starting to open, and take in what's around us.

I expect, when we DO find signs of intelligent life out there, it'll be a species far more advanced than us, but long since extinct.