New Saturn-Like Planet Has Two Suns
NASA's Kepler spacecraft uncovered the new planet, dubbed Kepler 16b, as it transited—or crossed in front of—both its parent stars, causing the brightness of each star to dim periodically.
(Related: "Darkest Planet Found: Coal-Black,digital video recorders It Reflects Almost No Light.")
Kepler data first allowed scientists to see that the stars are what's known as an eclipsing binary system—a pair of stars that orbit in such a way that they eclipse each other, causing them to dim, as seen from Earth.
Based on the eclipses,Human hair Full lace wigs the team calculates that the binary stars are just 20 percent and 69 percent the mass of our sun.
Sometimes, however, the system's overall brightness dipped even when the stars were not eclipsing each other—hinting at the presence of a third body orbiting the binary pair.
"By timing the stellar eclipses,,Moncler jackets, we could determine how much the third body was perturbing the two inner stars," said study leader Laurance Doyle, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
The extra, irregular dimming "turned out to be no stronger than a planetary gravitational pull would be."
Next: An Earthlike Planet With Two Suns?
Kepler's data suggest that the new planet is a Saturn-like gas giant without a solid surface.
Traveling on a nearly circular, 229-day orbit around both host stars, the planet lies outside the system's habitable zone—the region where liquid water, and thus life as we know it, could exist.Anime toys merchandise distributor
NASA's Kepler spacecraft uncovered the new planet, dubbed Kepler 16b, as it transited—or crossed in front of—both its parent stars, causing the brightness of each star to dim periodically.
(Related: "Darkest Planet Found: Coal-Black,digital video recorders It Reflects Almost No Light.")
Kepler data first allowed scientists to see that the stars are what's known as an eclipsing binary system—a pair of stars that orbit in such a way that they eclipse each other, causing them to dim, as seen from Earth.
Based on the eclipses,Human hair Full lace wigs the team calculates that the binary stars are just 20 percent and 69 percent the mass of our sun.
Sometimes, however, the system's overall brightness dipped even when the stars were not eclipsing each other—hinting at the presence of a third body orbiting the binary pair.
"By timing the stellar eclipses,,Moncler jackets, we could determine how much the third body was perturbing the two inner stars," said study leader Laurance Doyle, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California.
The extra, irregular dimming "turned out to be no stronger than a planetary gravitational pull would be."
Next: An Earthlike Planet With Two Suns?
Kepler's data suggest that the new planet is a Saturn-like gas giant without a solid surface.
Traveling on a nearly circular, 229-day orbit around both host stars, the planet lies outside the system's habitable zone—the region where liquid water, and thus life as we know it, could exist.Anime toys merchandise distributor
