Planet with Two Suns



Kepler-16b or "Tatooine"

The scientific community now has evidence that planets with two suns do exist.

Scientists at NASA and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute [SETI] are informally calling the newly discovered world Tatooine, as homage to Skywalker's planet imagined by George Lucas.

The so-called circumbinary planet has been dubbed with an official name that's much less interesting: Kepler-16b.

Unlike the tagline of the Star Wars saga, Tatooine is not located in a "galaxy far, far away," it's right in our own backyard -- relatively -- about 200 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Getting to Tatooine aboard a spacecraft traveling at light speed -- 186,282 miles per second -- would take about two centuries.[…]

Using data from NASA's $600 million Kepler telescope now orbiting the sun, a team lead by SETI's Laurance Doyle detected the actual shadow of a planet as it crossed in front of its two suns -- a scientific first.

The two suns orbit each other every 41 days. Kepler-16b orbits both every 229 days.