Giant ringed planet likely cause of mysterious eclipses

A giant gas planet - up to 50x the mass of Jupiter, encircled by a ring of dust - is likely hurtling around a star over 1000 light years away from Earth, according to international team of astronomers, led by University of Warwick Light from young star - PDS 110 in the Orion constellation - is regularly blocked by large object, thought to be an orbiting planet Next eclipse predicted to take place in September this year, and amateur astronomers across the world will be able to witness it Moons may be forming in the habitable zone around the star - leading to possibility that life could thrive within system A giant gas planet - up to fifty times the mass of Jupiter, encircled by a ring of dust - is likely hurtling around a star more than a thousand light years away from Earth, according to new research by an international team of astronomers, led by the University of Warwick. Hugh Osborn, a researcher from Warwick's Astrophysics Group , has identified that the light from this rare young star is regularly blocked by a large object - and predicts that these eclipses are caused by the orbit of this as-yet undiscovered planet. Using data from the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) and Kilodegree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT), Osborn and fellow researchers from Harvard University, Vanderbilt University, and Leiden Observatory analysed fifteen years of the star's activity.