Astronomers Discover 27 Potential Planets Each Orbiting Two Stars, Just Like the Fictional Tatooine in 'Star Wars'
The candidates came from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite data and could more than double the number of known circumbinary planets.
- On May 4, astronomers identified 27 new potential planets orbiting two stars, much like the fictional desert world Tatooine from Star Wars, according to research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society revealing distances from roughly 650 to 18,000 light-years from Earth.
- Despite more than 6,000 exoplanet discoveries, only about 18 circumbinary planets have been confirmed, as traditional transit detection methods miss planets that don't align perfectly with Earth's line of sight. Associate Prof Ben Montet of the University of New South Wales explained the limitation.
- Out of 1,590 star systems studied using apsidal precession and NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, researchers identified 36 systems showing behaviour explained only by a third body, with candidates ranging from Neptune-sized to 10 times Jupiter's mass.
- When the original Star Wars film debuted in 1977, exoplanets were unknown to science, yet study co-author Ben Montet stated he 'wasn't expecting to find 27 already at this point from the pilot study.'
- These potential discoveries could more than double known circumbinary planets pending verification, though study co-author Margo Thornton emphasized confirmation requires additional data analysis. Dr Sara Webb of Swinburne University of Technology noted such planets would likely possess 'very extreme environments, unlike anything in our solar system.
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Astronomers Identify 27 New Possible “Twin-Sun” Planets
An artist’s impression of the giant planet orbiting the binary system. Credit: NASA and G. Bacon / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain Astronomers have identified 27 new possible planets that orbit two stars instead of one, a rare type known as circumbinary planets. These systems, often described as “twin-sun” planets, offer a clearer view of how planets form in complex star environments. The discovery suggests that such worlds may be more common …
Astronomers Discover 27 Potential Planets Each Orbiting Two Stars, Just Like the Fictional Tatooine in 'Star Wars'
The findings could more than double our current database of worlds that loop around binary star systems. But researchers need to analyze more data before they can officially celebrate a new trove of far, far away exoplanets
Nearly 30 Star Wars Tatooine-like planets found in ground-breaking study
Astronomers have flagged 27 potential “Tatooine-like” worlds orbiting two suns in a new satellite survey, a discovery that could indicate thousands more twin-star planets are still waiting to be found
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