Former Stewardites Find Huge Ring System Around a Stellar Companion
Steward alumni Matt Kenworthy (postdoc and instrument scientist, now at Leiden Observatory), and Eric Mamajek (PhD 2004, now at Rochester) have found observational evidence for the existence of a giant ring system orbiting an unseen brown dwarf star or exoplanet orbiting the star "J1407" (its proper, formal name is 1SWASP J140747.93-394542.6). The evidence comes from an attempt to model the complex changes in brightness of an eclipse lasting 56 days. If this companion/planet and its ring system were placed at Saturn, the rings would be visible to the naked eye here on Earth, and would be many times larger than our full moon. A best estimate for the mass of the rings is approximately 1 Earth mass, about 100000 times more massive than the rings of the planet Saturn. J1407 is a very young star, and this observation teaches us how the gas and dust out of which stars form change with time and as planets or moons form. The photo is an artist's rendering against a venerable Dutch telescope. The CNN article can be found HERE.
The actual scientific preprint can be found HERE.
Photo Credit: Matt Kenworthy
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