The alien Saturn on steroids!
28.01.2015 22:00
From edge-to-edge, Saturn's ring system would be too big to fit in the distance between Earth and the moon.
But now a new ring system has been found that dwarfs Saturn's enormous structure – and it's the first of its kind to be seen outside our solar system.
Astronomers discovered more than 30 rings eclipsing the very young sun-like star J1407, each of them tens of millions of miles in diameter.
The rings were first spotted in 2012 by the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, and the University of Rochester in New York.
A new analysis of the data, led by Leiden's Matthew Kenworthy, shows that there are gaps in the rings, which indicate that exomoons may have formed in the space.
'The details that we see in the light curve are incredible,' said Professor Kenworthy.
'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.
'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 star light 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.'
(dailymail.co.uk)
ANN.Az
Similar news
Similar news
Photo 
Video 
