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Tatooine? Planet with double sunset found

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  • 16-09-2011 4:01pm
    #1
    Cork boy 55
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,324 ✭✭✭


    Interesting find.



    A planet orbiting two suns - the first confirmed alien world of its kind - has been found by Nasa's Kepler telescope, the US space agency announced.

    It may resemble the planet Tatooine from the film Star Wars, but scientists say Luke Skywalker, or anyone at all, is unlikely to be living there.

    The newly detected body lies some 200 light years from Earth

    link to BBC

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14940885

    Link to orginal report in science journal with PDF download
    We report the detection of a planet whose orbit surrounds a pair of low-mass stars. Data from the Kepler spacecraft reveal transits of the planet across both stars, in addition to the mutual eclipses of the stars, giving precise constraints on the absolute dimensions of all three bodies. The planet is comparable to Saturn in mass and size and is on a nearly circular 229-day orbit around its two parent stars. The eclipsing stars are 20 and 69% as massive as the Sun and have an eccentric 41-day orbit. The motions of all three bodies are confined to within 0.5° of a single plane, suggesting that the planet formed within a circumbinary disk.
    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6049/1602


Comments

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    #2
    IamtheWalrus
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,075 ✭✭✭IamtheWalrus


    What I don't get is why doesn't the 'middle' sun not distort the planet's orbit? Is it because the middle sun is very small so that it's gravitational pull is very weak?


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    #3
    slade_x
    Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 1,425 Mod ✭✭✭✭slade_x


    Already posted in the other thread on extrasolar planets:

    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056388756


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    #4
    irishh_bob
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,700 ✭✭✭irishh_bob


    genuine question but are thier telescopes which can see a distance of two hundred light years away which afaik is a lot further away than tipperary


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    #5
    Wertz
    Closed Accounts Posts: 11,909 ✭✭✭✭Wertz


    Strange, just the other night I was messing about trying to create a binary system with one orbiting planet in that gravity simulation thing that someone posted in one of the threads below.
    I could manage a stable system with two stars of equal mass and the right orbit speed for the planet but changing the masses of either star would move the centre of gravity and the bigger of the two suns would always slingshot or capture the planet after running the orbit for a while.


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