Sibling suns – made famous in the "Star Wars" scene where Luke Skywalker gazes toward a double sunset – and the planets around them may be more common than we've thought, and Cornell astronomers are presenting new ideas on how to find them.
Astronomers could discover a plethora of planets around binary star systems (stars that rotate around each other) by measuring with high precision how stars move around each other, looking for disturbances exerted by possible exoplanets. So explains new research, "Survival of Planets Around Shrinking Stellar Binaries," published in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences, July 9, by Diego J. Munoz, Cornell postdoctoral researcher, and Dong Lai, professor of astronomy, in the College of Arts and Sciences.
NASA's Kepler telescope is a heliocentric (it orbits the sun) spacecraft that monitors star brightness in a Milky Way region near the constellation Cygnus, the swan. Measuring photons, Kepler detects lower light values – and thus, a planetary transit.
Munoz explains that suns in the close binary system likely were once standard systems that have lost energy and shrunk, bringing the suns closer together. As the sibling sun's distance decreases, the orbits of that system's planets become misaligned, rendering it impossible for the Kepler telescope to detect planets – which no longer cross in the front of the suns.
Munoz and Lai suggest scouting for exoplanet-caused disturbances for compact binary star systems, to determine a new population of circumbinary planets. Said Munoz: "Since this type of 'compact' binary is very common, it had been very puzzling that no planets had been detected."
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Friday July 17 2015, @01:46PM
1. Find the bright center to the universe.
2. Look the opposite direction.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday July 18 2015, @12:26AM
Planets are found by observing a disturbance in the force.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @07:49PM
Exotic System Of "Quintuplet" Stars All Orbiting Each Other Discovered [techtimes.com]
this type of 'compact' binary is very common
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by bugamn on Saturday July 18 2015, @02:45AM
But finding a planet in a binary star system won't say anything about its surface, will it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2015, @05:55AM
But finding a planet in a binary star system won't say anything about its surface, will it?
Most likely a hive of scum and villainy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 18 2015, @10:10AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tataouine [wikipedia.org]
Been there, it was an interesting place. That was before the revolution though, things might be somewhat messy right not there. Hope it gets better.