From double sunrise to double sunset the show goes on, always changing. Sometimes the orange sun rises first. Or the red one, though they are never far apart and you can see them moving around each other, casting double shadows across the firmament and periodically crossing right in front of each other.
Such is life, if it were possible, on the latest addition to the pantheon of weird planets now known to exist outside the bounds of our own solar system. It is the first planet, astronomers say, that has been definitely shown to be orbiting two stars at once, circling the pair which themselves orbit each other tightly at a distance of some 65 million miles.
Astronomers using NASA's Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft announced the discovery on Thursday.
The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker, in the George Lucas “Star Wars” movies, which also had two Suns. “Reality has finally caught up with science fiction,” said an expert.
While some double-star systems, of which there are billion, have been suspected to harbour planets, those smaller bodies have never been seen. Beyond the wow factor, astronomers said the discovery as so many discoveries of so-called exoplanets have done had thrown a wrench into another well-received theory of how planets can and cannot form. “In other words,” said an expert , “people don't really know how to form this planet”.
It was long thought, she said, that for its orbit to be stable, a planet belonging to two stars at once would have to be at least seven times as far from the stars as the stars were from each other. According to that, Kepler 16b would have to be twice as far out as it is to survive.“This planet broke the rule,” she said. — New York Times News Service