Distant World Has Rings 200 Times Bigger Than the Rings of Saturn
Giant planet is the first found with a ring system like Saturn's.
A team of U.S. and British astronomers has stumbled on what may be a giant planet with rings 200 times the size of Saturn's.
The distant world, known as J1407b and first noticed four years ago, orbits a star located about 430 light-years from Earth—relatively nearby in cosmic terms. It's probably between ten and 40 times as massive as Jupiter, according to Matthew Kenworthy of the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands, lead author of a paper about the discovery that will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. The study reveals new details about the structure of the giant ring system.
As enormous as the planet itself is, giant worlds aren't especially unusual among the 2,000 or so exoplanets
