In January 13, 2012 SDSU astronomers discovered two planets that orbit a binary star system. Using the Kepler telescope professor William Welsh led the team that found Kepler 34-b and 35-b. in September, Welsh was also part of the team who discovered Kepler 16-b which was the first planet to be found orbiting two stars. This system is 200 light years away from earth and it can finally prove this idea of planets with two suns. Kepler 16-b is made of mainly cold rock and gas, its biggest stars mass is only 69% of our suns and the small star is 20% the mass of our sun. 16-b orbits around both stars every 229 days and lies outside of the habitable zone so its too cold for liquid water. We know that there are a lot of binary star systems in the Milky Way and this could meen there are more planets like Kepler 16-b.
Kepler had been observing these two orbiting stars and found that when the smaller star was behind the bigger one, there was still a dimming which indicated a third body. Observing that this dimming was irregular, astronomers found that the small planet was orbiting both stars in a large circle. These dimmings are called tertiary and quaternary eclipses. Most of the information that is gathered about a stars size comes from these eclipse patterns.
This is an amazing discovery because it shows that kepler can find small earth sized planets in the "habitable zone" (where liquid water can be found). Astronomers believe that these planets orbiting binary star systems are very common in our galaxy and this discovery is just another step towards finding other life.
I really thought that this was cool because I useto be into Star Wars and thay had a planit with two suns. They actually made a refrence to this on NASAs page where I found the article. Im also really interested to know if they can find other systems like this or if they are too far away.
