Have you ever wondered how amazing are those rings of Saturn and imagined what it would look like if Saturn is directly visible to your eyes? Yes, that will be a feast to our eyes!
Saturn’s rings are made up of pieces of comets, asteroids or broken moons that are shattered even before they formed the planet. Saturn’s ring system extends up to 282,000 kilometers from the planet which is a very negligible distance when compared to an exoplanet “J1407 b“.
If 282,200 kilometers is a mind-blowing distance to you, then you got it all wrong! The exoplanet “J1407b” has a ring system which is 200 times larger than the Saturn itself. J1407b is first in it’s kind to be found to have such a large ring system outside our Solar System!
J1407 is a star similar to our Sun in the constellation Centaurus at a distance of about 460 light years from the Earth. The age of the star and its mass is estimated to be 16 million years and 90% that of the Sun respectively! The star was observed to be eclipsed and orbited by one major body i.e. J1407 b. The exoplanet is thought to be either a brown dwarf or a gas giant planet with an immense ring system.
Ring System of J1407 b
The distance between the Sun and the Earth is 148 million km whereas, J1407 b exoplanet has a ring system that has an outer radius of approximately 89 million km which is like 640 times the extent of Saturn’s ring! Just remember that J1407 b is the true “Lord of the Rings” or also known as “Super Saturn“. The exoplanet has 37 rings in total.
Since the planet is 460 light years away from Earth, It’s impossible to travel there with our existing technology. Even if you travel at the speed of light, it would take 460 years to visit the planet. And even if you reach the planet successfully, living in J1407 b is quite difficult if it is a gas giant planet.
J1407 b is a very young planet as it’s just 16 million years old. The rings of this exoplanet might not remain so huge for a long time. These tiny dust and rock particles would gradually merge together and possibly form beautiful moons around the planet. For your knowledge, the current age of Saturn is more than 4.5 billion years. And who knows! Even Saturn and Jupiter might have had such gigantic and huge rings around them when they were younger!! Today in the form of Moons exists around there gas giants.
If you are a person who loves the beautiful ring systems on a planet, J1407 b would be a splendid information to know. Just imagine that if the Saturn’s rings were replaced with the rings of J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and several times larger than the full moon!
Isn’t it just amazing to know such existing worlds in our Universe?! The exoplanet “J1407 b” has become my new favorite exoplanet of all!
StarDustWaves 