Above: This illustration shows a planetary system orbitting two sun-like stars. [Lior Taylor / via SDSU]
Posted on 01/21/2012 3:25:21 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Three studies released Wednesday, in the journal Nature and at the American Astronomical Society's conference in Austin, Texas, demonstrate an extrasolar real estate boom.
San Diego State University astronomers, along with a team of scientists, have discovered two more planetary systems with two suns. Before, it was believed planets could only orbit a single sun, because a double sun, also known as a double star, would make the system too chaotic...
The two new planets, Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b, are gaseous Saturn-size planets. Kepler-34 b orbits its two sun-like stars every 289 days, and the stars themselves orbit and eclipse each other every 28 days.
Orosz said the discovery confirms it's not a fluke of nature...
Confirmed planets outside our solar system -- called exoplanets -- now number well over 700, still-to-be-confirmed ones are in the thousands.
NASA's new Kepler planet-hunting telescope in space is discovering exoplanets that are in a zone friendly to life and detecting planets as small as Earth or even smaller. That is moving the field of looking for some kind of life outside Earth from science fiction toward plain science...
The gravity of two stars makes the area near them unstable, Welsh said. So astronomers thought that if a planet formed in that area, it would be torn apart.
Late last year, Kepler telescope found one system with two stars. It was considered a freak. Then Welsh used Kepler to find two more. Now Welsh figures such planetary systems, while not common, are not rare either.
Orosz said now that they know what they're looking for, it opens up a whole new world of astronomy.
(Excerpt) Read more at kpbs.org ...
Above: This illustration shows a planetary system orbitting two sun-like stars. [Lior Taylor / via SDSU]
NASA Spacecraft Discovers Planet Orbiting 2 Suns, Just Like Star Wars
CBS | September 15, 2011 6:24 PM | Matt Bigler
Posted on 09/16/2011 9:18:07 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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Has there been any info on possible planets in the Alpha-Centauri system?
For them to be going around TWO suns in only 289 days, they’re really moving. Gravitational sheer must be huge. I guess it’s good they’re gaseous.
Interesting. I would imagine, that this means that this planet is too hot to support life. It must spend large parts of it’s orbit inside of the range of Venus to the sun.
"Plant foobar root after sun A eclipses sun B but before first spring, unless a second winter will preceed the first spring, but only at high tide."
/johnny
Unless one of the two suns is a lot bigger that the other, such that the barycenter is inside the larger sun (thus making the smaller sun orbit the larger one just like another planet), I can’t see how the orbit of another planet would be stable.
I wish I could write.
My insomnia cure is to think up a fictional planet and fill out the environment, climate etc. Mine is a planet that orbits tidally locked in a close orbit around a red dwarf which orbits a sunlike star at a distance a bit further out than mars. An orbit around the dwarf is about 3 days which makes a day on the “darkside” about 36 hours long.
After a year of thinking on something like that, you’d be surprised at how much detail you can fill in. I’ve decided that it needs a Walmart.
You probably never heard of the distant planet Mai that orbits a tri-star system. Sometimes referred to as Mai Three Suns.
The moon is named Uncle Charlie?
From the article:
“First of all you’d see a double sunrise and a double sun set every day and second of all, your climate would be very very odd because as the stars orbit each other, the distance from the planet to each star is changing and so the amount of sunlight you get is a very complex function of time.”
- Jerome Orosz
Before, it was believed planets could only orbit a single sun, because a double sun, also known as a double star, would make the system too chaotic.
- JournoList
Seems like the stars orbit each other, and the planet orbits the two stars.
Wow. Praise the Lord for making things so complex and beautiful!
JRandomFreeper : LOL!
Probably already a Starbucks there. ;)
/johnny
I’ll make my own coffee but I gotta buy it somewhere.
It was OK when I was emperor of a whole planet populated by just me but when I started letting other people live there they started getting antsy not having toilet paper and the like so I had to let Walmart in.
I’m a kind emperor. I even let turd burglars live there but they gotta live on the island of Bunghole.
Will there be a Planet Fitness? I hate unfit planets.
Consider adding a mountain range and planting coffee shrubs from the Tres Rios area of Costa Rica.
That's what I buy here on terra (green beans, in 10# bags) and roast and grind myself. Much cheaper than Starbucks, and even cheaper than Folgers, if you buy online in bulk. ;)
I'd read the book, given what I've read so far. Go for it, write it.
/johnny
You won’t be needing a spa, there’s plenty of hard work to be done. I’m sending out another crew to scout for minerals in the mountains to the north if you want to go.
I would imagine exotic alien grown coffee would bring a pretty penny back on earth.
I’m a capitalistic emperor as well.
/johnny
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