A…Tatooine exoplanet with twin stars has been detected
Taken from Star Wars
Astronomers have spotted the exoplanet BEBOP-1c in a star system that strongly resembles Tatooine, the fictional planet from the Star Wars universe and home to Luke Skywalker. The designation “Tatooine” does not refer to the surface of the planet but to the fact that it is in a system with two stars, as until recently the existence of a planet in such a system was considered impossible.
The system includes two stars that orbit each other and so far 14 planets have been discovered that orbit two stars in a binary system. The prevailing belief until now was that binary systems did not allow the formation of planets due to the unstable environment created by their gravitational interactions. However, the discovery of Kepler-16b disproved this belief and proved that it is possible to create planets in such systems.
The binary system TOI-1338 is located 1,320 light years from us. In 2020, NASA’s TESS space telescope spotted the exoplanet TOI-1338b, and while trying to measure its mass, they accidentally spotted BEBOP-1c. BEBOP-1c is a massive gas giant with 65 times the mass of Earth but five times lighter than Jupiter. It completes one orbit around the two stars in about 215 Earth days.
TOI-1338b is in a closer orbit which it completes in 95 days. Its mass is 22 times that of Earth. So far, only these two exoplanets have been discovered in this particular system, but scientists hope that others will soon be discovered.
The research was published in Nature .