‘Eye of Sauron’ image reveals disc forming around alien planet – By Sky News Staff (SKY News) / July 23 2021
The striking image offers astronomers the opportunity to observe a system featuring both newly-forming planets and moons at the same time.
Scientists have captured an image of a circumstellar disc, and within it a planet with a moon-forming disc, that looks like the Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings cinematic franchise.
Observations of the system, nearly 400 light years away in the constellation Centaurus, reveal a planet within the circumstellar disc called PDS 70c that has another disc around it, approximately 500 times larger than Saturn’s.
The exoplanet was first directly imaged using infrared wavelengths in 2019, but a new observation from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile has revealed the construction in even more detail.
CONTINUE > https://news.sky.com/story/eye-of-sauron-image-reveals-disc-forming-around-alien-planet-12361826
