New Tatooine-like exoplanet discovered orbiting twin suns. Meet BEBOP-1c. [View all]

By Charles Q. Choi published about 22 hours ago

The discovery of the new planet BEBOP-1c confirms the 2nd-ever known planetary system orbiting twin stars.



Illustration of a circumbinary planet, a world in orbit around not one, but two stars, orbiting their center of mass. (Image credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)

For decades, astronomers wondered if planets with twin suns like Luke Skywalker's fictional home world of Tatooine were only science fiction. Now, scientists have now discovered a new Tatooine-like system that is home to multiple worlds.

Binary stars, or two stars orbiting each other, are very common — about half of the sun-like stars in the Milky Way galaxy are in binary systems. Up to now, astronomers had confirmed the detection of 14 circumbinary planets — ones that whirl around both stars of a binary system at once.

"Circumbinary planets were originally thought not to exist, since the binary stars stir up the planet-forming disks, creating a harsh environment for planets to form," study lead author Matthew Standing, an astrophysicist at the Open University in England, told Space.com. "This all changed with the discovery of Kepler-16b in 2011 by the Kepler space telescope. This discovery showed that it must be possible for these planets to form."

Until now, just one binary system was known to host multiple planets — Kepler-47, located about 5,000 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan. This multiplanetary circumbinary system possesses a whopping three known worlds, Kepler-47 b, d and c.

More:
https://www.space.com/tatooine-exoplanet-binary-systeim-twin-suns