binary solar system found

Now this is pretty exciting: the Kepler space telescope team has confirmed the presence of a planet around a double binary star system. Hello Kepler-16b.



There's been a lot of debate about whether a solar system like this could exist, if the planetary orbits around a binary star would be stable.

The comparisons have already been made to the most famous, perhaps, of all fictional dual sun worlds, Luke Skywalker's Tatooine. But the discovered world is a gas giant about the diameter of Saturn. So unlikely to harbour Tuskan Raiders and Jawas. Thank goodness.

Curiously, I stumbled across this headline over at Spaceflight.com; not in Sky and Telescope.