Researchers have identified a faraway exoplanet with a more extensive ring system than even Saturn.
According to BBC News, authors of a study published in the Astrophysical Journal estimated the ring system was some 200 times greater than Saturn's. They said each ring could be tens of millions of kilometers wide and there could be as many as 30 or more.
"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," study co-author Matthew Kenworthy, an astronomer at the Leiden Observatory, said in a press release. "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."
Eric Mamajek, another study author and a researcher at the University of Rochester, said the exoplanet is a "super Saturn."
"The planetary science community has theorized for decades that planets like Jupiter and Saturn would have had, at an early stage, disks around them that then led to the formation of satellites," he told BBC News.
Like other deep space observing projects, the astronomers waited to see the planet's host star dim as the planet passes in front of it. For this planet, they saw strange eclipses lasting nearly two months.
"The light curve from end-to-end took about two months, but we could see very rapid changes in the space of one night," Kenworthy told BBC News. "Over a time of half an hour, the star can dim by 30 or 40 percent."
