Space probe detects a planet with a double sunset

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When the day ends on planet Kepler-16b there is a double sunset, scientists reported on Thursday in the journal Science.

In a scene reminiscent of science fiction, researchers using observations from NASA's Kepler spacecraft have detected a distant planet orbiting two waltzing stars, the first time such a phenomenon has been confirmed.

"This is really a stunning measurement by Kepler," said Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a co-author of the study. "The real exciting thing is there's a planet sitting out there orbiting around these two stars."

Binary stars -- two suns turning around each other -- have been seen before, and astronomers have suspected planets exist around them, but Kepler's observations are the first to confirm it.

The gravitational pull of two stars, even stars like the relatively small ones at the heart of this stellar system, would be quite different from the gravity exerted by just one star, Boss said by telephone.

Kepler's mission is to scour our section of the Milky Way galaxy for Earth-like planets in the so-called "habitable zone" that is not too close and not too far away from the stars they orbit.

LIKE LUKE SKYWALKER'S HOME?

The spacecraft does this by finding stars whose light periodically gets dimmer, which means there is an orbiting astronomical body -- a planet -- passing between the star and Kepler's instruments. This is known as a planetary transit.

What made this find so eye-popping was that the stars were eclipsing each other as first one and then the other got in the way. And then a third eclipse indicated a planet was part of the system.

If the notion of a planet with two suns seems familiar, it may be because it was displayed in the earliest "Star Wars" film on the fictional planet Tatooine, home of Luke Skywalker.

Tatooine was a rocky, desert planet, but Kepler-16b is a cool gas giant, Boss and other researchers said.

Because both of its suns are smaller and cooler than our sun, Kepler-16b would be quite cold, with a surface temperature of around minus 100 to minus 150 degrees F (minus 73 to minus 101 degrees Celsius), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a statement. The center's Josh Carter is co-author of the study.

Kepler-16b is similar to Jupiter in size and mass, a cold gas giant that orbits its two suns every 229 days at a distance of 65 million miles (104.6 million km). That is roughly the same distance as Venus' orbit, compared to Earth's 365-day orbit around the sun at a distance of about 93 million miles (149.7 million km).

This newly detected planet is 200 light-years from Earth and is not thought to harbor life. A light-year is about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km), the distance light travels in a year.

Video: Distant planet has double sunset. - YouTube

Source

[rodsky]

George Lucas must be smiling



-RODION

[saidox]

sayang, Kepler-16b is a cool gas giant and not rocky. d ghpon ma achieve ang kana nga view ^^ if ever .. hehehe..

[kit_cebu]

mga bossing/rodsky...a few questions...

why are scientists looking into the heavens in great distances (light years away) when this distance can't even be reached in 1 person's lifetime?

Light-year - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


how are they able to know what are the chemical composition of that planet/star when they can't even reach it?

***these might sound stupid but hell, i would want to ask and hopefully get a layman term/commoner explanation....
they're spending a lot of money for research on things like these when they could spend it on the nearer reach of space...



.

[cromagnon]

I always liked to be in a diferent planet looking at the horizon lying .

[rodsky]

mga bossing/rodsky...a few questions...

why are scientists looking into the heavens in great distances (light years away) when this distance can't even be reached in 1 person's lifetime?

Light-year - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It can be reached if the time dilation principle as discussed in the theory of relativity is exploited.

Time dilation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

how are they able to know what are the chemical composition of that planet/star when they can't even reach it?

***these might sound stupid but hell, i would want to ask and hopefully get a layman term/commoner explanation....
they're spending a lot of money for research on things like these when they could spend it on the nearer reach of space...

.

Composition of a distant star or planet can be determined through spectroscopy.

Spectroscopy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And Kit, we will never get any answers if we don't stop asking questions.

-RODION

[jeshcel]

US astronomers said Thursday they have discovered the first planet that is orbiting two Suns, much like the fictional home of Luke Skywalker featured in Star Wars.

Skywalker's native planet of Tatooine was hot and desert-like, but this planet, called Kepler-16b, is a freezing cold world about the size of Saturn, orbiting two parent Suns in a near perfect circle about 200 light years away.

The planet was glimpsed with the US space agency's Kepler space telescope, which monitors the brightness of 155,000 stars, according to the research published in the journal Science.

"This discovery is stunning," said co-author Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science Department of Terrestrial Magnetism.

"Once again, what used to be science fiction has turned into reality."

While astronomers have previously glimpsed planets they believed were orbiting two stars, they had never before seen one actually passing in front of its two Suns so this discovery offers the first proof.

"Kepler-16b is the first confirmed, unambiguous example of a circumbinary planet -- a planet orbiting not one, but two stars," said co-author Josh Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"Once again, we're finding that our solar system is only one example of the variety of planetary systems nature can create."

If there were people on Kepler-16b, they could relax to the view of a double sunset, but such a scenario is highly unlikely due to the planet's extreme frigid surface temperature of -100 to -150 Fahrenheit (-73 to -101 Celsius).

The chill is likely due to the fact that even though the planet has two Suns which it orbits every 229 days at a distance of 65 million miles (105 million kilometers), they are smaller and cooler than our single Sun.

One of Kepler-16b's Suns is 20 percent as massive as ours, and the other is 69 percent as massive.

While the planet orbits them, the two Suns dance with each other in an "eccentric 41-day orbit," the study said.

The study was led by Kepler scientist Laurance Doyle of the California-based SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute.

Source: http://ph.news.yahoo.com/us-astronom...231557895.html

[Kenshiro]

Dual sun system is more common than single sun than ours as what scientist discovered.

[miekuh]

y man sige sila ug pang discover? hadlok sila sa lunop sa kalibutan mao ngita laing padulngan

[loucellmar]

What if human were planted in earth by aliens.
And we are secretly guided by them.
That what we discover today are just an coin size knowledge of their earth sized knowledge

That their reason why they plant us is that they are hoping that we could give them answer to their unanswered question.