Massive Ring System Surrounds Exoplanet J1407

Posted on January 30, 2015

An exoplanet has a massive ring system surrounding it that dwarfs that of Saturn. The ring system is 200 times bigger than Saturn's. J1407 was first discovered in 2012. Astronomers say it is either giant planet or a brown dwarf. New analysis of the data indicates the system has over 30 rings.

The study was led by Matthew Kenworthy at the Leiden Observatory. The data found that each of the rings around J1407 is tens of millions of kilometers in diameters. They also found gaps in the rings that indicate the formation of satellites or exomoons.

Kenworthy says in a statement, "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. 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."

The astronomers used adaptive optics and Doppler spectroscopy to estimate the mass of system J1407. They found that the ring system contains an Earth's worth of mass in light-obscuring dust particles. They also estimate that the enormous ring system measures 120 million kilometers (75 million miles).

The image below shows what the sky over the Old Observatory at Leiden would look like if the monster rings around J1407 were put around Saturn. You can view a larger image of the ring system here.

Here is the exoring computer model that fits the light curve of J1407. It uses SUperWASP data collected in 2007. Take a look:

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