A world orbiting two suns - the initial fixed foreign world of its type - has been found by Nasa's Kepler telescope, the US space group voiced .
It might resemble the world Tatooine from the movie Star Wars, but scientists say Luke Skywalker, or any person at all, is doubtful to be living there.
Named Kepler-16b, it is think to be an uninhabitable chilled gas giant, similar to Saturn.
The newly rescued body lies a few 200 light years from Earth.
Though there have been hints in the past that planets encircling twice stars might exist - "circumbinary planets", as they are well known - scientists say this is the initial confirmation.
It means when the day ends on Kepler-16b, there is a twice sunset, they say.
Kepler-16b's two suns are not as big than ours - at 69% and 20% of the pile of the Sun - creation the aspect heat an estimated -100 to -150F (-73 to -101C).
The world orbits its two suns every 229 days at a stretch of 65m miles (104m km) - about the same stretch out as Venus.
The Kepler telescope, launched in 2009, is written to scour the division of the Milky Way for Earth-like planets.
"This is unequivocally a overwhelming dimensions by Kepler," mentioned Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution for Science nearby Washington DC, a co-author of the study.
"The actual interesting thing is there's a world sitting out there orbiting around these two stars."
Kepler finds stars whose light is continually dimmed when an orbiting world passes between the star and the telescope.
In this case, the team was moreover able to watch dimming when one star transfered in front of the other.
Nasa's scientists saw extra dips in the light in both stars at rotate but periodic times, confirming the twin circuit of the planet.
Data composed by the Kepler telescope allows for very correct measurements of the mass, radius and trajectories of all 3 bodies - the most appropriate ever estimates of a extra-solar planet.
The anticipating was reported in Friday's situation of the biography Science .
No comments:
Post a Comment