NASA Spacecraft Discovers Planet Orbiting 2 Suns, Just Like Star Wars

CBS ^ | September 15, 2011 6:24 PM | Matt Bigler

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[Thunder90]

PING

[JoeProBono]

[ConservativeMan55]

bttt

[glorgau]

The tidal forces on those planets must be enormous. Also bet that the orbits are not stable. Hot for a while and cold for a while.

[Cardhu]

NASA handout image shows an artist's concept of the circumbinary planet Kepler-16b - the first planet known to definitively orbit two stars. [Photo/Agencies)

[MCCC]

I was on another site which someone said let me know when they find a wookie. Here ya go.

[albionin]

Sometimes I wish I could have been born about 100 years in the future. Just imagine what we will find when we finally get out there to some of these systems. Meteorites made of solid gold-platinum-palladium. Planets with 10 moons visible in the night sky. Planets where there are Lobsters the size of Elephants and plenty of Lemons and Butter. And Hush Puppies.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Sky and Telescope article says the orbit is stable, at least on a time scale of millions of years, or else it wouldn’t be around today. Tidal forces would be an interesting topic. The planet’s orbit is about 3 degrees off the orbit of the two stars, and is precessing smartly, as you might expect. In a few years, it will only transit one of the two stars and then neither, until it comes back in 2047. I can’t wait. (The nodes of the orbit will no longer fall along the line of sight to the Earth.)

As to tides, one would expect that objects in close proximitity and so deformable to be tidally locked. The motion of the planet around the stars would be quite non-keplarian, as the two lumps moved around their mutual center of gravity, but I think this would cause considerable liberation, but not a whole lotta tides. Anyway, you raise an interesting point.

[SoldierDad]

Na, that’s the bloodsucking creature from that one Star Trek episode.

[Digger]

If it wasn't too early for me to see something like that, I'd be at the zoo.

ROTFLMAO. After that pic I'll probably never go to a zoo again.

[KevinDavis]

Note to self.. Make sure to get SPF 9000 when visit a system with two suns..

[Vaquero]

Na, that’s the bloodsucking creature from that one Star Trek episode.

Spot on!

[Vaquero]

"...Use the FORKS"

[JoeProBono]

[ixtl]

When I first saw Star Wars in 1977 (1977??! Has it bneen that long?), I thought those were moons.