A team of astronomers from the Leiden Observatory (The Netherlands) and the University of Rochester (USA) has discovered a ring system close to a star similar to the Sun, named 'J1407'. The finding has been published in the journal Astrophysical Journal.
The planet in question was discovered a few years ago by the University of Rochester. Then, it was learned that this seemed to have a considerable size and was surrounded by a ring system, being the first of its kind found outside the Solar system. Now, thanks to the new observations, scientists have discovered that these rings are gigantic: not only are they huge but they count 30 rings and occupy 120 million kilometers (200 times more than those of Saturn). This size would mean that if Saturn had this kind of rings, they would be visible to the naked eye from Earth as we see the Moon every day in the sky, or even better.
Astronomers found these objects when they eclipsed the star, a phenomenon that lasted several weeks and allowed experts to appreciate details such as the fineness of the rings. "The star is too far away for the rings to be seen directly, but a detailed model could be made based on the variations in the light brightness of the star passing through the ring system," explains Matthew Kenworthy, leader of the study.
"You could think of it as a kind of super-Saturn. In particular, each ring measures tens of millions of kilometers in diameter. If the four large Galilean satellites of Jupiter were ground into dust and ice and the material spread out in their orbits in a ring around Jupiter, the ring would be so opaque to light that a distant observer would see the ring passing in front of the Sun. I would see a deep eclipse, "explains Eric Mamajek, co-author of the study.
According to experts' estimates, this colossal ring system is likely to contain more or less the mass of an Earth in the dust particles that obscure the light and that the planet has an orbital period of more or less a decade of duration.
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