{"id":410536,"date":"2026-05-04T01:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T01:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/410536\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T01:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T01:01:08","slug":"scientists-discover-27-potential-new-planets-that-orbit-two-stars-in-solar-systems-far-far-away-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/410536\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists discover 27 potential new planets that orbit two stars in solar systems far, far away | Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Astronomers have discovered 27 new potential planets that orbit two stars, like the fictional desert planet Tatooine from the Star Wars<\/a> universe.<\/p>\n

To date, only about 18 circumbinary planets \u2013 which orbit around two stars \u2013 had been identified in the universe. More than 6,000 planets have been discovered that orbit single stars, like Earth does around the sun.<\/p>\n

In a timely publication for 4 May, also known as Star Wars Day<\/a>, scientists have identified nearly 30 more candidate planets, whose distances range from 650 to 18,000 light years away from Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many things in astronomy that aren\u2019t very tangible,\u201d said Assoc Prof Ben Montet of the University of New South Wales (UNSW), the study\u2019s senior author. But thanks to the famous Tatooine sunset scene<\/a> in the first Star Wars film, \u201ceveryone has a picture of what a circumbinary planet looks like and what would it mean to stand on a planet with two suns\u201d.<\/p>\n

More than half of the stars in the universe exist in binary or multiple star systems. Scientists previously identified circumbinary planets via their transits: when these planets pass in front of a star, \u201cit casts a shadow on the star\u2019s surface, we see a dip in brightness of the star \u2026 and we can infer there\u2019s something going around it,\u201d Montet said.<\/p>\n

But this only happens when the planet and its star perfectly align with our line of sight from Earth. \u201cWe\u2019re missing lots of systems, potentially,\u201d Montet said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlanets are hard to find. It\u2019s like trying to see a candle right next to a big street light.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers instead used a method known as \u201capsidal precession\u201d, searching for a wobble between stars that orbit around and eclipse each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we monitor the exact timing of these eclipses\u2026 that can tell us that there\u2019s something else going on in the system,\u201d said Margo Thornton, the study\u2019s lead author and a PhD candidate at UNSW.<\/p>\n

After eliminating other factors such as the rotation and gravitational pull of the two stars, the team identified 36 star systems out of 1,590 whose behaviour could only be explained by a third body.<\/p>\n

For \u201c27 of those objects, it is possible that they are planet mass\u201d, Thornton said. More research into their spectra \u2013 the light they emit \u2013 was needed to formally confirm them as circumbinary planets, she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of: what is the mass of it? Is it a planet? Is it a brown dwarf? Is it a star?\u201d<\/p>\n

The team discovered the potential planets \u2013 which likely range from Neptune-sized to ten times heavier than Jupiter \u2013 using data from Nasa\u2019s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite<\/a>, a planet-hunting space telescope that launched in 2018.<\/p>\n

Dr Sara Webb, an astrophysicist at the Swinburne University of Technology who was not involved in the research, said the team\u2019s \u201cvery clever techniques\u201d could be used to find more planet candidates in the future.<\/p>\n

Circumbinary planets would likely have \u201cvery extreme environments\u201d unlike anything in our solar system, Webb said. \u201c[But] a planet like Tatooine could potentially exist where there is that sweet spot between its orbit of the two stars \u2013 where it\u2019s not too hot and it\u2019s not too cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the original Star Wars was released, we didn\u2019t know that there were exoplanets [planets outside our solar system] at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of things that are predicted in art and in artistic concepts of what the universe might be, we tend to find it \u2026 in science as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Astronomers have discovered 27 new potential planets that orbit two stars, like the fictional desert planet Tatooine from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-410536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410536\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}