This is rather old (circa 2005), but I stumbled across it and thought it was neat / amusing. The image above is from the Hubble Space Telescope of Fomalhaut, which is a star in Pisces Australis (about 25 light years away). The rings / Sauron's Eye is actually dust around the star. The dust around the star is thought to be maintained by collisions between comets, etc., orbiting Fomalhaut.
Another interesting thing about Fomalhaut is that it is only about 1/20 the age of our sun, and might provide us a sneak-peak of what our own sun was like millions of years ago. Fomalhaut is also unique in that Fomalhaut b (astronomers are so creative with their names) is orbiting around it. Fomalhaut b is the first exoplanet to be photographed in the visible light region and is estimated to be about three times the mass of Jupiter.
References:
Image from Hubble Space Telescope / NASA (public domain)
Semeniuk, Ivan. "Hubble Spies Lord of the Stellar Rings." New Scientist. N.p., 2005. Web. 09 Jan. 2013.
"Fomalhaut." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 01 Sept. 2013. Web. 09 Jan. 2013.
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ReplyDeleteOne does not simply stumble across Sauron's Eye.
ReplyDelete3 points. Fomalhaut has been a subject of great controversy over the last couple of years. It was thought that the first directly imaged exoplanet, Fomalhaut b, might not have been real, just a fluke of the data. But recent observations have confirmed it.
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