Gas GIant Exoplanet J1407b's Rings Intrigue

Back in 2007, astronomers observed a series of unusual eclipses coming from a star 420 light years from Earth. In 2012, a team from Japan and the Netherlands reasoned that this phenomena was due to the presence of a large exoplanet – designated J1407b – with a massive ring system orbiting the star. Since then, several surprising finds have been made.

For example, in 2015, the same team concluded that the ring system is one-hundred times larger and heavier than Saturn’s (and may be similarly sculpted by exomoons). And in their most recent study, they have shown that these giant rings may last for over 100,000 years, assuming they have a rare and unusual orbit around their planet.

In their previous work, Rieder and Kenworth determined that the ring system around J1407b consisted about 37 rings that extend to a distance of 0.6 AU (90 million km) from the planet. They also estimated that these rings are 100 times as massive as our Moon – 7342 trillion trillion metric tons. What’s more, while J1407b’s existence is yet to be confirmed, they were able to rule out the possibility of it having a circular orbit around the star.

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