Posted on 01/28/2015 2:55:55 PM PST by Drew68
(CNN)In 1610, after he built his telescope, Galileo Galilei first spotted enormous Saturn's gigantic rings. More than 400 years later, astronomers have in a sense dwarfed that discovery with a similar first.
Using powerful optics, they have found a much larger planet-like body, J1407b, with rings 200 times the size of Saturn's, U.S. and Dutch astronomers said.
It lies some 400 light-years away from Earth.
For decades, scientists have believed that many moons around large planets formed out of such ring systems. But this is the first one astronomers have observed aside from Saturn's, they said.
It was discovered in 2012, but a detailed analysis of its data was recently completed and published.
Dominating the sky
If J1407b were in our solar system, it would dominate Earth's nightly sky.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
What J1407b's rings would look like on Saturn if viewed from Earth:
Wow
If that was in our solar system, there would be religions worshiping it
ring ping
Which means we are seeing what was happening when Galileo was doing his thing looking at Saturn. Which also means it may or may not still be there; probably is, but we won't know for another 400 years, by which time it may or may not still be there, but we won't know...
Makes sense to me.
Wow! Just, WOW! :)
400 years isn’t very long so they rings probably wouldn’t change all that much. UNLESS, the moons form much faster than we currently think they do which is also a possibility.
Its important to note that a very large diffuse ring was discovered around Saturn just a few years ago.
No need to see it.
Saturn worship: http://andyettheydeny.blogspot.com/2010/01/occult-symbolism-saturn-worship.html
Makes sense to me.
So they are saying that the rings reflexivity would be enough to see in daylight on Earth at Saturn’s distance which is 9x Earth’s?
The way things are going, there's a good possibility that none of our future ancestors will be around 400 years from now either.
It's like Obama. It's a brown dwarf that got hot, but never quite made it as a star. There's rings of stuff attracted to it, but not much going for it otherwise.
The rings on this "Super Saturn" (which is actually a brown dwarf, 10-40 times the mass of Jupiter) are 120 million kilometers in diameter. Given that Saturn is 1.2 billion kilometers away from the Earth at its closest approach, I'm sure rings this size would be visible in daylight.
120 million kilometers is pretty big. By comparison, the Earth is 150 million kilometers away from the Sun.
Looks a lot like my bath-tub.
As Lilly Tomlin’s telephone operation Ernestine’s character would say: “One ringy dingy; two ringy dingies; three ringy dingies”.
Sonny & Cher singing: “And the rings go on, and on and on”.
Accretionists rule !!
None of us will have ancestors alive 400 years from now, unless they find a way to extend lifespans to 500 years.
Or frozen...
Itty-bitty planetoid...
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