— Astronomers using NASA's Kepler mission have discovered two new
circumbinary planet systems -- planets that orbit two stars, like
Tatooine in the movie Star Wars. Their find, which brings the number of
known circumbinary planets to three, shows that planets with two suns
must be common, with many millions existing in our Galaxy.
The two new planets, named
Kepler-34b and Kepler-35b, are both gaseous Saturn-size planets.
Kepler-34b orbits its two Sun-like stars every 289 days, and the stars
themselves orbit each other every 28 days. Kepler-35b revolves around a
pair of smaller stars (80 and 89 percent of the Sun's mass) every 131
days, and the stars orbit one another every 21 days. Both systems reside
in the constellation Cygnus the Swan, with Kepler-34 located 4,900
light-years from Earth and Kepler-35 at a distance of 5,400 light-years.
In : devilx-science