Artist’s conception of the extrasolar ring system circling the young giant planet or brown dwarf J1407b. The rings are shown eclipsing the young sun-like star J1407, as they would have appeared in early 2007.
Credit: Ron Miller
J1407b is the first brown dwarf planet discovered with the rings by the transit method. The star is situated in the constellation of Centaurus with at a distance of 433.8 light-years away from the earth. It was discovered by Eric Mamajek (an American astronomer).
It is also known as the super Saturn because it has a ring-like structure around it comprising of gas, dust, and ice like Saturn. The ring system is roughly 200 times larger than Saturn.
However, the planetary science community has theorized for decades that planets like Jupiter and Saturn had rings around them at the early stage of their formation that led to the formations of their natural satellite that we see today. Until this planet was discovered it was hard for someone to think that a planet with such a vast ring system could exist. Astronomers expect that the rings will become thinner in the coming million years and will eventually disappear as satellites form from the materials present in the ring. Astronomers estimated that the ringed companion J1407b has an orbital period of roughly a decade in length. The mass of J1407b has been difficult to find but it is most likely in the range between 10 to 40 Jupiter masses.
The age of super Saturn is estimated to be years old. It is found that the planet contains over 30 rings each of them is tens of millions of kilometers in diameter. In contrast they have also found the gaps between the rings this might indicate that the satellites have formed in them. The result has been accepted for publication in the astrophysical journal.
Many other astonishing planets have been found by the astronomers paving the way to a new world of possibilities and opportunities.
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