In 2007, a young star went dark for 56 DAYS — and astronomers believe the best explanation is something extraordinary.
The star V1400 Centauri, 451 light-years away, was eclipsed by an object called J1407b. It was never photographed — everything we know is inferred from that one eclipse. The model that fits the starlight: a vast disk, or rings, about 200x wider than Saturn's rings, with at least 37 rings stretching 90 million km out, and gaps that hint moons may be forming.
But is J1407b a giant planet or a brown dwarf? No one knows. It has never eclipsed the star again — and it may not even orbit the star at all, just a free-floating wanderer that passed once. The Super Saturn we saw only once.
Sources: Mamajek et al. 2012, AJ; Kenworthy & Mamajek 2015, ApJ (ring model, 37+ rings); Kenworthy 2020 overview (likely free-floating).
PROJECTORBIT — the universe, one planet at a time.
#ProjectOrbit #J1407b #SuperSaturn #exoplanet #spacetok
