Astronomers Discover SUPER Planet 200 Times BIGGER Than Saturn

 

Saturn is often considered one of the

 most beautiful planets in existence

 perhaps it has something to do with its

 subtle amber hues engulfing its surface

 or perhaps it's those massive cloud

 rings that give it a sophisticated

 and elegant touch that makes it stand out from the other planets in our solar system it's hard to deny that Saturn is not only aesthetically pleasing but truly a majestic planet what if i told you there was a planet out there that could outclass our beautiful Saturn welcome to Science Reads today we will explore the new lord of the rings planet j1407b

 our own ringmaster before we move forward and see how the super Saturn fares in our galaxy we should take a deeper look at our own ringmaster and see what makes its ring so special the history of Saturn is rather unique and since it's a planet that can be seen with the naked eye it's virtually impossible to know who discovered it as it has been in our skies since the dawn of men it wasn't until the 15th century when Galileo was able to observe the skies with his groundbreaking invention the telescope and we were finally able to observe Saturn in greater detail Galileo himself was perplexed when he first took a look at Saturn he wasn't sure what to make of it looking through his telescope in 1610 it appeared to him as a regular planet with two massive moons orbiting it six years later in 1616 Galileo made a more precise telescope and was able to observe some sort of arms or handles around it making him even more confused than before it was a few decades later when Italian astronomer and mathematician Giovanni Cassini suggested that perhaps the handles Galileo observed were some sort of rings that orbited the planet the mystery of what these rings were composed of lasted for centuries some believe these rings were a type of

 flat moons that surrounded the planet

 others thought they were an exotic type of gas yet unknown to humans it wasn't until the 1995 mission pioneer 11 that we were able to capture the first detailed pictures of Saturn's rings we learned that what seemed to be solid

 rings turned out to be millions of smaller ringlets we learned that the outermost layer of these ringlets was 170 thousand miles across or 273 600 kilometers surprisingly the rings are not as thick as we had speculated in the past the majority of the ringlets fall

 somewhere between 10 meters or 33 feet

 and one kilometer or six tenths of a mile thick the combined mass of these particles in these ringlets which is composed of 99.8 percent ice is about 16 quadrillion tons which is less than 0.02 percent of the mass of earth's moon and less than half the mass of one of Saturn's moons Mimus thanks to these new observations we have a better idea of how these rings possibly came to be when a moon and a planet interact with one another their gravitational forces pull them apart or push them together on earth when our moon pulls on the opposite side of earth it causes the ocean tides these tidal forces also affect planetary moons if a moon comes too close to a planet these forces can overcome the gravitational glue holding the moon together and slowly over time tear it apart which eventually causes the moon to break up and spread along its original orbit forming one of these rings the minimum safe distance for a moon's orbit is approximately 2.5 times the planet's radius from the planet's center for saturn this is a distance of 54 000 miles or 87 000 kilometers above its surface which coincidentally matches the exact location of one of saturn's outer rings on earth this distance is less than 6200 miles 10 000 kilometers above its surface thankfully our own moon is a very safe 236 thousand miles or 380 000 kilometers but not too far from our own little solar system lives another planet with a very unique ring structure that could easily put saturn to shame the lord of the rings what is even crazier is that we just came across another planet similar to saturn except for the fact that its ring system is over 200 times larger planet j1407b dubbed super saturn is located in the constellation of centaurus roughly 420 light years away from earth this exoplanet was discovered back in 2012 by the university of rochester in new york in the united states this massive saturn-like planet appears to be the first planet outside our solar system to have rings similar to Saturn according to astronomer eric mamacic who led the team responsible for discovering this relatively young planet this planet is in all essence a Saturn on steroids it orbits a host star named j1407 this star is estimated to be very similar to our sun and roughly 90 of its mass scientists believe it is relatively young at only 16 million years old whereas our sun was formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago meaning that v1400 centauri is just a baby in astronomical years it has a surface temperature of 5757 kelvin nearly the same as the sun which has a surface temperature of 5778 kelvin from the surface of j1407b its star would look almost identical to the sun as viewed from the earth now let's dive into some of the reasons that make this super saturn so unique j1407b's ring system consists of about 37 rings each of which is tens of millions of kilometers in diameter it is estimated that the outermost string has a whopping diameter somewhere between 120 and 180 million kilometers which is more than 200 times larger than the rings of saturn to put that into perspective the distance from the earth to the sun is about 148 million kilometers dr matthew kenworthy of leiden observatory estimates the ring system likely contains an earth's worth of mass in light obscuring dust particles and went on to say

 if we could replace saturn's rings with the rings around j1407b they would be easily visible in the night sky in fact it would appear to us several times larger than the full moon it would certainly make an awe-inspiring sight and give a little extra flair to our already beautiful night sky though it's hard to calculate with the

 limited information we have currently

 this massive exoplanet is estimated to be 20 times bigger than saturn it also has an extremely long orbit as it takes an entire decade to orbit its sun which would mean that if there is alien life on this planet they would not be able to celebrate their birthdays as often as ourselves we know so little about this celestial body that we're not completely sure if it is a planet or a brown dwarf due to its huge mass in fact so little is known about this planet that the university team who discovered this super saturn are encouraging amateur astronomers to take out their telescopes and keep an eye on star j1407 in hopes they may observe the rings eclipsing it again and report the results to the american association of variable star observers which collects astronomical data on stars that change in brightness at the moment there isn't enough budget or manpower to collect more data from this planet which is extremely unfortunate if we could learn more about j1407b we could learn how saturn came to be perhaps at one point in time it looked very similar to this humongous planet perhaps if we could gather more data we could learn how moons are born and perhaps it could finally reveal how some of these massive new planets are born it is a shame that such vital projects aim to understand the intricacies of the cosmos are constrained by the amount of budget an observatory has at its disposal but for now we have to accept this grim reality and help fund these organizations that are doing the real work to answer the most important questions of all how the universe came to be thank you all for reading i hope you have learned something new if you did be sure to leave it a like and subscribe to our channel for more amazing content like this if you're feeling generous you can buy us a coffee with the link in the description this will help us towards our goal of bringing you better and longer articles every single day of the week and as always thanks for reading we'll see you next time