NASA’s Kepler spacecraft discovered an exoplanet where two suns may rise and set. No, it’s not Star Wars‘ Tatooine, but it comes in at a close second.
The discovery of exoplanet Kepler 1647b was announced at the American Astronomical Society during a meeting last Wednesday. While it may not be exactly like the planet from A New Hope, it does come in with some comparisons from another place in the Star Wars universe. With a gas composition, radius, and mass comparable to that of Jupiter, it’s also similar to the gas-clouded Bespin and Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back.
Aside from these comparisons, Kepler 1647b is one of many circumbinary (orbits two suns) exoplanets found. It just happens to be the largest out of them. It’s 4.4 billion years old, which is the same as Earth. But its orbit takes a lot longer than our little blue sanctuary: 1,107 days to orbit both stars.
The exoplanet is 3,700 light years away, and the stars it orbits are similar to our own sun. But one star is slightly larger than the other one. There is a tinge of hope for this gas giant. Because it lies within what scientists deem as the ‘habitable zone’, there is a chance that there may be liquid water on its surface. This is only a slight probability, as scientists do not yet know if the exoplanet has large moons.
Before the discovery of Kepler 1647b, all circumbinary exoplanets were smaller than Saturn. Scientists know there are more exoplanets to be discovered, not only in this galaxy but farther out in the universe.
“Planets with more than one sun have long captivated our collective imagination, yet direct evidence of their existence has emerged only in the past few years,” say the researchers, led by NASA Goddard postdoctoral fellow Veselin Kostov, according to CNN.
