As Webb telescope spots Neptune's rings, NASA recounts exoplanet with over 30 of them

Scientists are currently marvelling at Neptune, the icy giant of our solar system, which was recently photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope in a completely new light. Neptune has been imaged with multiple rings this time and according to NASA, astronomers have the clearest view of the planet for the first time in over three decades. While the newly released pictures by the Webb telescope remain a hot topic, the agency revisited an exoplanet that was discovered in 2012 with overwhelmingly massive rings.

Introducing the exoplanet J1407b

Discovered by astronomer Eric Mamajek, from the University of Rochester at the time, the planet named J1407b is orbiting a very young Sun-like star named J1407. Estimates suggest that the planet has an orbital period of roughly ten years and is in the range of about 10 to 40 Jupiter masses.

Through observations using the Leiden Observatory in The Netherlands, Mamajek and his colleagues found that the planet's rings are so enormous that they are eclipsing the light emerging from its parent star. "The details that we see in the light curve are incredible. The eclipse lasted for several weeks, but you see rapid changes on time scales of tens of minutes as a result of fine structures in the rings", Matthew Kenworthy of Leiden Observatory said in a statement.

Astronomers revealed in their research that they confirmed the eclipse on the star by noticing the repeated dimming of the starlight. They also confirmed that there are over 30 rings around the planet and each of them is tens of millions of kilometers in diameter. To get an idea of their enormity, scientists have not been able to spot the planet due to this ring system. According to estimates, the diameter of the ring system is nearly 120 million kilometers, more than two hundred times as large as the rings of Saturn. 

"If you were to grind up the four large Galilean moons of Jupiter into dust and ice and spread out the material over their orbits in a ring around Jupiter, the ring would be so opaque to light that a distant observer that saw the ring pass in front of the sun would see a very deep, multi-day eclipse,” Mamajek said, putting things into perspective. He further said that in the case of the star J1407, about 95% of its light is being blocked by the rings which hint toward an amount of material enough to form natural satellites. 

In the study, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal, Mamajek and his team also noted a gap within the rings which suggests the formation of J1407b's companion which has a mass between that of Earth and Mars. Kenworthy says that finding eclipses from more objects like J1407’s companion “is the only feasible way we have of observing the early conditions of satellite formation for the near future".