A team of astronomers has discovered an exoplanet with rings that are similar to Saturn’s.
The newly exoplanet was named J140TB and scientists say that it revolves around a star that is approximately 430 light years away from our planet.
According to the astronomers, the newly found exoplanet with Saturn-like rings is between 10 to 40 times bigger than Jupiter, and the size of its rings is approximately 200 times bigger than the rings of Saturn.
The scientists believe that the exoplanet’s ring system is made of a total of 37 rings. The rings have a diameter of tens of millions of miles.
The astronomer who discovered the exoplanet is Mark Pecaut. He discovered it by pure accident on 2011 while he was examining a group of young stars known as the Scorpius-Centaurus Association.
The astronomer examined the star for more than a year and with a team of scientists from the University of Rochester New York, they announced the discovery of a new giant ring system in 2012.
Dr. Matthew Kenworthy, a member of the team who discovered the exoplanet and an astronomer at the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, explained that the star is located at a very large distance, making it difficult for the scientists to observe its rings in a direct way.
Dr. Kenworthy added that they were able to make a detailed model based on “the rapid brightness variations in the star light passing through the ring system”.
The scientists believe that the exoplanet and everything that orbits it are approximately 16 million years old. This means the star is young and it’s possible that it can condense into moons in the near future.
According to the astronomers, Saturn has already gone through this process when the Earth’s solar system was still young.
Scientists say they will use this in order to figure out how the planetary rings are created.
The new exoplanet and its surrounding rings were discovered using UK’s SuperWasp, which is believed to be the best program for detecting exoplanets.
The SuperWasp can detect when an exoplanet crosses its parent stars, which makes the light of the planet dim.
Image Source: ytimg
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