Astronomers photographed a cosmic “eye of Sauron”

Astronomers photographed a cosmic “eye of Sauron”

MOSCOW, may 22 — RIA Novosti. Microwave Observatory ALMA has got the most precise to date pictures of the “eye of Sauron” — the star Fomalhaut surrounded by a “burning” ring of dust and gas, resulting from the collision of comets and asteroids, according to the European southern Observatory.

Fomalhaut is among the relatively young and bright stars in the sky of the southern hemisphere, located relatively close to the Ground. This star is removed from us by 25 light years, and for its size it is much larger than the Sun. So, its mass is about 2.3 solar diameter — 1.9 diameter of the Sun. She is about 18 times brighter than the Sun and hot it at 3 thousand degrees Kelvin.

In 2008, a team of astronomers led by Paul Kalas (Paul Kalas) from the University of California at Berkeley (USA) announced the discovery of a giant planet in the dust disk around Fomalhaut. The findings of Kalas and his colleagues were criticized and 2011 in peer-reviewed journals, several new studies, the authors were unable to find signs of the existence of Fomalhaut b.

Pictures from the Hubble and other telescopes obtained in 2012, has denied this view, and “resurrected” planet, which recently received its “official” name. It was called “Dagon” in honor of the Akkadian deity associated with seafaring and agriculture, as well as the main prototype for the Cthulhu Mythos stories of HP Lovecraft.

New images taken by the ALMA telescope, a powerful microwave Observatory of the Earth to confirm the existence of this planet. Like the “eye of Sauron”, as the scientists explain, can occur in a star system only if there is a large planet, drove the fragments of comets and asteroids in the narrow region of orbit and causing them to collide.

Ring of gas and dust, “collected” Dagon, situated at a distance of about 20 billion miles from Fomalhaut, which is approximately two times greater than the distance between the Sun and Pluto. Its width is about two billion kilometers, which is about 13 times greater than that of the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The study of this space the “eye”, as scientists hope, will shed light on the history of the formation of Dagon and help us understand how often there are “twins” of the Earth and other planets.

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