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An amazing new exoplanet discovery has been described as a 'super Saturn'.

'Super Saturn' exoplanet may harbour Earth-sized moon in its gigantic rings


Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer

Thursday, January 29, 2015, 3:01 PM - Astronomers studying a nearby Sun-like star have made an amazing discovery. The strange 'eclipses' or 'transits' they have been seeing from in the light from this star indicate an incredible find - what can only be described as a 'super Saturn'.

Point a telescope at the planet Saturn on a clear night, and you'll be gifted with an amazing sight. At about 120,000 kilometres across, and with a set of rings that spans roughly double that, even though Saturn is quite distant from us, the average backyard telescope could at least pick out the planet and its rings. A fairly good telescope could will even let you see the planet's cloud bands, and the structure of the rings as sunlight glints off them.


According to the Dutch and American astronomers who have been studying exoplanet J1407b, which orbits an orange dwarf star located about 116 light years from Earth, this planet makes Saturn - the second largest planet in our solar system, with the largest ring system here as well - look like a pipsqueak by comparison.

An artist's impression of Super Saturn exoplanet J1407b. Used with permission. Credit: Ron Miller, Black Cat Studios

"This planet is much larger than Jupiter or Saturn, and its ring system is roughly 200 times larger than Saturn’s rings are today," Eric Mamajek, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester and co-author of the study of this planet, said in a university press release. "You could think of it as kind of a super Saturn."

According to Matthew Kenworthy, an astronomer at the Leiden Observatory, in The Netherlands, "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."


Here is a view of what J1407b might look like in this hypothetical situation. Credit: Matthew Kenworthy, Leiden Observatory

Based on their study, the astronomers estimate that J1407b is anywhere from 10 to 40 times the mass of Jupiter, possibly making it a failed star, and its ring system stretches across 120 million kilometres and is packed with exomoon-making material.

"If you were to grind up the four large Galilean moons of Jupiter into dust and ice and spread out the material over their orbits in a ring around Jupiter, the ring would be so opaque to light that a distant observer that saw the ring pass in front of the sun would see a very deep, multi-day eclipse," Mamajek explained in the press release. "In the case of J1407, we see the rings blocking as much as 95 percent of the light of this young Sun-like star for days, so there is a lot of material there that could then form satellites."

CLICK BELOW TO WATCH: This simulation of J1407b's exorings shows how projected pattern of light shining through the rings matches the intricate dips and spikes in the light-curve from J1407, even revealing that the ring system is tilted with respect to our view from Earth.

If J1407b is, indeed, similar to Saturn, the gaps in the rings may be due to the very same reason they appear in Saturn's rings - they were swept clean during the formation of moons.

One gap, in particular, near the edge of the ring system, has attracted the attention of the research team, due to its width and the size of the exomoon that would have developed from all the material swept up to form that gap.

"One obvious explanation is that a satellite formed and carved out this gap," said Kenworthy, according to the Rochester U press release. "The mass of the satellite could be between that of Earth and Mars. The satellite would have an orbital period of approximately two years around J1407b."

Given that the planet's star is slightly cooler than our Sun, and the planet is roughly the same distance from its star as Jupiter is from our Sun, it's very unlikely that this large exomoon would be Earth-like. However, scientists have already speculated about the potential for life under the icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa, or even among the hydrocarbon lakes of Saturn's Titan, so there is the possibility that such a large moon could harbour life of some kind.

With the planet's 10 year orbit, and the last observations being from 2012, the next opportunity to see another pass of J1407b's rings will be in 2022, but according to the study, the findings are already leading astronomers to search through observations of other stars, to see if they can detect the same patterns, and uncover other exo-Saturns out there.

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