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Astronomers Find Vast Ring System Eclipsing a Distant Star

Posted by Soulskill on from the one-ring-to-occlude-them-all dept.

Zothecula writes: Astronomers from the Leiden Observatory, Netherlands, and the University of Rochester, New York, have discovered a massive ring system obscuring the light of the young star J1407b. It is believed that the rings belong to a massive planet or possibly a brown dwarf, with an orbital period of roughly 10 years. The giant planet boasts a ring system around 200 times larger than that of Saturn, the only planet in our solar system hosting a ring system of its own."

19 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings, not just Saturn.

    1. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by Jerry+Rivers · · Score: 2

      Just wondering if, as far as we know, only gas giants have rings?

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      The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
    2. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Rings need gravity to hold them in place, low temperature to stop them from dissipating and need to be far enough from the parent star not to be blown away. You also need a replenishing source of material otherwise the ring material will coalesce over time.

      Maybe a rocky planet a few times bigger than earth could hold a ring made of the element mercury at a distance of from the sun as Mars.

    3. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by magarity · · Score: 2

      One of the items on the new horizons checklist is to see if Pluto has rings.

    4. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by D-Fly · · Score: 2

      Every grammar school kid knows that the other gas giants also have (faint) ring systems. How did the submitter AND the Slashdot editor put such a ridiculous mistake on the front page of a nerd site? (Also this is kind of old news, widely reported last week).

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    5. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by reverseengineer · · Score: 3, Informative

      No, the centaur object Chariklo (an icy asteroid between Saturn and Uranus) was recently discovered (2013) to have a set of rings, and a few other objects in that size range are suspected to.

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      "FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
    6. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by arth1 · · Score: 2

      Just wondering if, as far as we know, only gas giants have rings?

      No

      And to be pedantic, the ice giants have them too.

    7. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by arth1 · · Score: 2

      One of the items on the new horizons checklist is to see if Pluto has rings.

      Just a collar.

      What's fascinating about Pluto is how it could capture so many satellites. The Pluto/Charon binary is not all that massive, and any passersbys are likely to have a relatively high speed. Looking for mpact craters might tell us more - some of the moons might be fragments from relatively recent collisions.

    8. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by Snarky+McButtface · · Score: 3, Funny

      Odin destroyed the ice giants.

    9. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by rubycodez · · Score: 2

      Slashdot under Dice Holdings is rather like a cleanroom under management of poo flinging monkeys

    10. Re:Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have rings. by StevenMaurer · · Score: 2

      I usually browse at a score of "0" because sometimes Anonymous Cowards say interesting things. You two are making me regret that.

  2. Wait, what? by Red4man · · Score: 5, Informative

    planet boasts a ring system around 200 times larger than that of Saturn, the only planet in our solar system hosting a ring system of its own.

    Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune would like to have a word with you.

    Planets with Rings

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  3. Now, THERE's a tourist attraction... by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Since so many people have already stepped up to shame the submitter and editor about botching the ONE statement not drawn directly from the article...

    I'll just say that I would love to see a night sky featuring this ring system at, oh, say, Jupiter's distance from Earth. It would appear several times larger than the full Moon, and many, many times brighter. Anybody want to cook up a rendering?

    1. Re:Now, THERE's a tourist attraction... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Since so many people have already stepped up to shame the submitter and editor about botching the ONE statement not drawn directly from the article...

      I'll just say that I would love to see a night sky featuring this ring system at, oh, say, Jupiter's distance from Earth. It would appear several times larger than the full Moon, and many, many times brighter. Anybody want to cook up a rendering?

      This is stale news; the BBC covered it and included an artist's impression in this article more than a week ago.

  4. Details from Afar by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    I think it's cool that using the profile of the star brightness peaks and valleys as various parts of the ring eclipsed the star, one can reconstruct an approximation of what the rings actually look like.

    Even though the planet is so very far away, there are various tricks to obtain details. Gravity lenses are another "trick of universe" to magnify distant objects that otherwise would be very obscure or invisible. The down-side is that one cannot really "aim" these tricks, but have to be lucky and/or patient to take advantage of them. The universe likes to tease us.

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    Table-ized A.I.
  5. Re:Dyson sphere by sexconker · · Score: 2

    No. A Dyson sphere is impractical and stupid.
    No civilization smart enough to be able to build one would be dumb enough to actually do so.

  6. They should rename that star by Snotnose · · Score: 4, Funny

    to "finger", cuz someone put a ring on it.

  7. Re:Dyson sphere by Russ1642 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Humanity is smart enough to do lots of great things and dumb enough to do a bunch of others. I'll bet other civilizations share the same traits.

  8. Re:Dyson sphere by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 2

    They might build it, you know, just for fun. Why not?