The Lord of the Rings
- spacecrewemail
- Apr 2, 2021
- 2 min read
Welcome back deep space adventurers, as usual this is SpaceCrew talking to you!
Today, we're going to take you on a journey of discovery to one of the most fantastic planets ever discovered by the human race!
You thought Saturn was the planet with the most rings? Well you were wrong: in the universe there are thousands of planets far more incredible than the one on our doorstep, and one of them is "j1407b".
This small planet, discovered by researchers way back in 2012, has a special feature that has made it famous in the world of astronomy: its huge number of rings!
At a distance of 434 light years from our home, this gas giant offers us an incredible show of rings that expand to a total length 200 times greater than Saturn's. Suffice it to say that its coveted rings measure 'ONLY' in radius the distance separating the earth from the moon (about 275,000 km). Therefore, making a quick calculation, we can guess, with a fair margin of error, that the overall length of the rings of j1407b is 60 million km.
On the other hand, as far as mass and size are concerned, according to the data collected from the observations caused by the eclipse of the planet on its sun, it is possible to estimate that the mass is between 30 and 130 times Saturn's (making it comparable to that of a brown dwarf).
The orbital period of this "lord of the rings" is instead estimated at 56 days, forming a very fast motion around its star (j1407).
Returning, however, to its fantastic rings, it is possible to state more or less correctly that the number of bands present in them is around 37 (about five times as many as Saturn's) and that their composition consists mainly of debris, dust and small moons.
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