The geometrical centre of the ring is offset to the left of the star’s position, shown with a yellow dot (Image: NASA, ESA, Kalas/Graham/UCB, Clampin/NASA/GSFC)
Even the Hubble Space Telescope must have done a double-take when it snapped this spectacular image, looking for all the world like the Great Eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Hubble’s picture of the off-centre ring of dust around Fomalhaut, one of the nearest and brightest stars in the sky, offers the best evidence yet that a planet, or planets, is orbiting the star.
With Hubble’s help astronomers at the University…
