Imagine a world with two different Suns in the sky, similar to Luke Skywalker’s home desert planet Tatooine in “Star Wars.” Such a world exists, as NASA announced in September 2011. But now, NASA has found something twice as remarkable: In a different system, NASA has detected two separate planets, both orbiting the same two stars, which are in turn, both orbiting each other. – Karl Franzen [TPM Idealab]
FROM NASA comes a truly remarkable discovery.
Coming less than a year after the announcement of the first circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, NASA’s Kepler mission has discovered multiple transiting planets orbiting two suns for the first time. This system, known as a circumbinary planetary system, is 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
This discovery proves that more than one planet can form and persist in the stressful realm of a binary star and demonstrates the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy.
Since star systems are the ways that large clumps of matter have chosen to arrange themselves, I suspect we’ll find all manner of systems.
It’s so fascinating. This photo blew me away.