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. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
It lies some 400 light-years away from Earth. <\/p>\n
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 outside of our solar system, they said. <\/p>\n
It was discovered in 2012, but a detailed analysis of its data was recently completed and published. <\/p>\n
Dominating the sky <\/p>\n
If J1407b were in our solar system, it would dominate Earth's nightly sky. <\/p>\n
\"If we could replace Saturn's rings with the rings around J1407b, they would be easily visible at night and be many times larger than the full moon,\" said Matthew Kenworthy from the Netherlands' Leiden Observatory. <\/p>\n
Unlike Galileo peering a relatively short distance through his simple telescope, today's astronomers can't eyeball the rings hundreds of light-years away. <\/p>\n
But using two very powerful optical devices with eight cameras each, they can observe the effect the rings have as they pass across nearby star J1407 -- written without a 'b' at the end. <\/p>\n
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Astronomy first: 'Super Saturn' rings<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In 1610, after he built his telescope, Galileo Galilei first spotted enormous Saturn's gigantic rings. Continue reading