inothernews: Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits not one, but two stars, and they’re — informally — calling it “Tatooine.”  From the New York Times: From double sunrise to double sunset the show goes on, always changing. Sometimes the orange sun rises first. Sometimes it is the red one, although they are never far apart in the sky and you can see them moving each other, casting double shadows across the firmament and periodically crossing right in front of each other. Such is life, if it were possible, on the latest addition to the pantheon of weird planets now known to exist outside the bounds of our own solar system. It is the first planet, astronomers say, that has been definitely shown to be orbiting two stars at once, circling at a distance of some 65 million miles a pair of stars that are themselves circling each other much more closely. A team of astronomers using NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced the discovery on Thursday in a paper published online in the journal Science and in a talk at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas “Star Wars” movies, which also had two suns. Indeed, a representative from Mr. Lucas’s production company, Lucasfilm, expected to participate in a news conference at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory in California, Kepler’s home office.
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inothernews:

Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits not one, but two stars, and they’re — informally — calling it “Tatooine.”  From the New York Times:

From double sunrise to double sunset the show goes on, always changing.

Sometimes the orange sun rises first. Sometimes it is the red one, although they are never far apart in the sky and you can see them moving each other, casting double shadows across the firmament and periodically crossing right in front of each other.

Such is life, if it were possible, on the latest addition to the pantheon of weird planets now known to exist outside the bounds of our own solar system. It is the first planet, astronomers say, that has been definitely shown to be orbiting two stars at once, circling at a distance of some 65 million miles a pair of stars that are themselves circling each other much more closely. A team of astronomers using NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced the discovery on Thursday in a paper published online in the journal Science and in a talk at a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas “Star Wars” movies, which also had two suns. Indeed, a representative from Mr. Lucas’s production company, Lucasfilm, expected to participate in a news conference at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory in California, Kepler’s home office.

Source: The New York Times

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    Astronomers have discovered a planet that orbits not one, but two stars, and they’re — informally — calling it...
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