J1407b - Blog Posts

Can you tell us something about j1407b?

J1407b is an exoplanet (but it can also be a brown dwarf) very interesting, orbiting its star J1407. It is larger than Saturn or Jupiter, and is surrounded by a ring system that is about 200 times larger than the rings of Saturn, very different from what we are accustomed to see.

Thirty-seven rings extending 90 million kilometers from the planet — over half the distance from the Earth to the sun — encircle the world. These planetary rings are the first found outside the solar system.

This exoplanet is 434 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus.

J1407b could house moons that could be formed by the material of the rings. One of their moons could be as large as Mars or Earth, and could orbit between the gaps of the rings, shaping them.

Astronomers expect the rings to become thinner in the next million years and eventually disappear as they form satellites from the material of the rings.

The discovery of the J1407 system and its unusual eclipses were reported by the team led by astronomer Eric Mamajek of the University of Rochester in 2012. The orbital period of J1407b is estimated at about a decade.

Simulation of the eclipse of the star J1407 by the ring system around its putative exoplanet J1407b. Each time a ring passed in front of the star, it dimmed. When entering a gap, the star brightened up again. Graphing the highs and lows, scientists created a profile of the ring system.

What the rings of J1407b would look like in our sky (above the Old Observatory in Leiden, Netherlands) if it was located where Saturn is now.

image 1°, image 2°, image 3°, image 4, image 5° & image 7°

Here are some links if you want to read more about it: here, here and here.