{"id":444361,"date":"2025-12-13T11:26:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T11:26:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/444361\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T11:26:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T11:26:27","slug":"scientists-discover-real-life-star-wars-planet-with-two-suns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/444361\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover real-life Star Wars planet with two suns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is it a two-for-sun deal.<\/p>\n

Astronomers were blown away after discovering a bizarre exoplanet that orbits twin stars closer than any ever seen before in a binary star system, per a starry study published in the journal \u201cAstronomy & Astrophysics.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Researchers with Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, released a time-lapse showing the planet orbiting around the luminous two-fer, which has been compared to the twin suns over Tattooine \u2014 the home planet of Luke Skywalker in \u201cStar Wars.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStar War\u201d film set of Tattooine, the home planet of Luke Skywalker. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Dubbed HD 143811 AB b, the interstellar entity is a gas giant that\u2019s located some 446 light-years away from Earth in a galaxy far, far away, Space.com reported.<\/a><\/p>\n

However, it is reportedly six times closer to its twin light sources than any binary system exoplanet imaged prior, offering researchers the rare opportunity to analyze the trajectory of the planets and stars in this system.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf the 6,000 exoplanets that we know of, only a very small fraction of them orbit binaries,\u201d team member and exoplanet imaging expert Jason Wang of Northwestern University\u00a0said in a statement<\/a> regarding the solar double header. \u201cOf those, we only have a direct image of a handful of them, meaning we can have an image of the binary and the planet itself.\u201d <\/p>\n

He added, \u201cImaging both the planet and the binary is interesting because it\u2019s the only type of planetary system where we can trace both the orbit of the binary star and the planet in the sky at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite its relative proximity to its suns compared to other exoplanets, HD 143811 AB b is still 80 times further from its light sources than Earth is from the Sun. That means that it takes the planet 300 years to finish a single revolution around the sun, even while the binary stars race orbit each other once every 18 days.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf the 6,000 exoplanets that we know of, only a very small fraction of them orbit binaries,\u201d team member and exoplanet imaging expert Jason Wang of Northwestern University\u00a0said in a statement regarding HD 143811 b (pictured). University of Exeter<\/p>\n

The planet is also a whopper \u2014 reportedly six times the size of fellow gas ball Jupiter.<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, HD 143811 AB is not a new discovery. Rather, it was brought to light, er lights, after Wang and colleagues uncovered HD 143811 AB b in archival data that was originally gathered a decade ago 10 years ago by the Gemini South telescope and its Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) instrument.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think we\u2019d find any new planets,\u201d Wang said. \u201cBut I thought we should do our due diligence and check carefully anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, after analyzing GPI data gathered from 2016 and 2019 and cross-referencing it with intel collected by the W.M. Keck Observatory, the team picked up a faint dot that was following the trajectory of a star.<\/p>\n

HD 143811 b (pictured) is a gas giant six times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits its two suns once every 300 Earth years. University of Exeter<\/p>\n

Wang deemed this significant as \u201cstars don\u2019t stand still in a galaxy; they move around,\u201d prompting astronomers to search for them and then revisit their findings later to see if they\u2019ve migrated. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf a planet is bound to a star, then it will move with the star,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes, when we revisit a \u2018planet,\u2019 we find it\u2019s not moving with its star. Then, we know it was just a photobombing star passing through.\u201d <\/p>\n

He added, \u201cIf they are both moving together, then that\u2019s a sign that it\u2019s an orbiting planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

In accordance, the team was able to confirm that the entity a deed was indeed a planet \u2014 a conclusion that was also arrived at independently by astronomers from the University of Exeter in the UK.<\/p>\n

Among the many striking revelations, scientists noted that the exoplanet is 1,416\u00b0F \u2014 almost twice as hot as Venus, IFL Science reported.<\/a><\/p>\n

It was also around 13 million years old, which is relatively young by universe standards, especially when one considers that the Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago.<\/p>\n

What is yet unclear is how this planet formed around its twin suns in the first place. \u201cExactly how it works is still uncertain,\u201d Wang said. \u201cBecause we have only detected a few dozen planets like this, we don\u2019t have enough data yet to put the picture together.\u201d<\/p>\n

The space experts hope to continue tracking the orbits of the planet and its stars so they can\u00a0\u201clearn more about the interactions between binary stars and planets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is it a two-for-sun deal. Astronomers were blown away after discovering a bizarre exoplanet that orbits twin stars…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":444362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[4514,27902,1183,159,783,4810,582,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-444361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-astronomy","9":"tag-planets","10":"tag-research","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-stars","14":"tag-sun","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115712018819221974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}