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Dec 14, 2021

We’ve Found A Unique Giant ‘Tatooine’ Planet That Orbits Two Stars Say Scientists

Posted by in category: alien life

Astronomers just found something unique in the Milky Way–a giant exoplanet in a 200-days orbit around two stars.

In a find that remind us of that binary sunset in the original Star Wars movie, the Tatooine-like “TIC 172900988b” is a Jupiter-sized planet.

Known as a “circumbinary” planet, TIC 172900988b’s existence has been revealed in a paper published in the Astronomical Journal by a team led by Veselin B. Kostov of the SETI Institute.

Although not unique in being a circumbinary planet–astronomers have found 14 such bodies so far–it’s the most massive transiting circumbinary planet to date.

It’s also the first to be found using a single set of data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) all-sky survey space telescope.

However, finding it wasn’t easy.

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