Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Great Eye of Sauron



Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have released a rather remarkable Hubble image of a ring of dust around star Fomalhaut, described by New Scientist as resembling "the Great Eye of Sauron".

Fomalhaut, aka Alpha Piscis Austrini, is one of the brightest stars in the night sky, lying around 25 light years from Earth and weighing in at roughly 2.3 solar masses. Its name comes from the Arabic fum al-ħawt, or "whale's mouth", although we reckon "Sauron's Eye" might be a suitable new moniker.

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