Slashdot Mirror
Newly Formed Solar System
xPsi writes "An article in New Scientist reports that a team of astronomers from UC Berkeley and NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center have used the Hubble space telescope to image a dust
ring in orbit around Fomalhaut, a nearby star about 25 light years away.
The ring 'offers the best evidence yet that a nearby star is circled by a
newly formed solar system.' Oddly enough, from the Earth's vantage point,
the ring also happens to resemble The Eye of
Sauron. One Ring to rule them all, one Ring to find them..."
The discoverers knew the ring-like object was there beforehand. It was observed in infrared light first. What is unprecedented is the clarity of the feature in visual light and accurate knowledge of its geometry (the center of the ring (ellipse) isn't exactly coincident with the central star, which implies some other gravitating object is present).
If the presence of a planetary system weren't suspected, I doubt they would have gotten orbits to use the HST to observe this.
As for the "newly formed" stuff, it has nothing to do with the Hubble picture. It merely is a speculation based on the fact that the star is A-type star (like Vega) that hadn't evolved too much (I don't remember how old, but it's nowhere near as old as the Sun...) Anyway, add the word "astronomically" in front of "newly formed" to make a better sense out of the phrase.
Oddly enough, from the Earth's vantage point, the ring also happens to resemble The Eye of Sauron.
Actually, the black pupil isn't really there, it's just the Hubble's coronagraph (see TFA). So, while the picture indeed resembles the Eye of Sauron, the system doesn't really look like this seen from Earth.
Go here:
STScI Press Release
Click on the top image, then scroll down to find unannotated version of images and click on it. Then you'll find a big TIFF file of this picture.
Enjoy.
When a planet orbits a star, that star is it's Sun. The Sun is not a singular entity.