A Star System Where Planets Circle Around Twin Suns

Scientists have recently detected a star system where planets orbit two stars instead of just one, reminiscent of the iconic “binary sunset” from the original Star Wars movie. TOI-1338, the 12th known circumbinary star system, is located 1,320 light-years away in the southern hemisphere constellation Pictor and is only the second to have more than one planet. The new research from the BEBOP (Binaries Escorted By Orbiting Planets) team, published in Nature Astronomy, reports the discovery of the second planet, BEBOP-1c.

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The first planet, TOI-1338b, was discovered in 2020 using the transit method, observing the light of one of the stars dip slightly as the planet crossed its disk as seen by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). It has been described as similar to Neptune in the solar system. However, BEBOP-1c was discovered using the radial velocity method, observing one of the stars wobble, an effect caused only by the gravitational pull of planets around it.

“Only 12 circumbinary systems are known so far, and this is only the second that hosts more than one planet,” said David Martin, an astronomer and Sagan Fellow at the Ohio State University.

BEBOP-1c is a massive planet, with a mass 65 times larger than Earth but around five times less than Jupiter’s. It orbits both stars every 215 days. Lead author Dr. Matthew Standing, who completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham in the UK and is now a researcher at The Open University, said, “This was a difficult system to confirm, and our observations were interrupted by the COVID pandemic when telescopes in Chile closed for six months during a critical part of the planet’s orbit.”

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.

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