Newly Discovered Planet Has Two Sunsets, But No One Sees

Newly Discovered Planet Has Two Sunsets, But No One Sees : NASA astronomers have recently announced their first discovery of a planet orbiting a binary star. Officially known as the Kepler-16b, the planet is called the "Tatooine" after Luke Skywalker's home planet of Star Wars original movies. But unlike the fictional planet is not habitable by any forms of life known. And it exists in our own Milky Way, not some galaxy far, far away. From earth’s vantage point, astronomers observed Kepler-16b crossing in front of its two parent stars a phenomenon they call “transit.” Gravity holds the stars in orbit around one another, and the planet’s orbit circles both of them. The discovery is a major success for NASA’s Kepler space observatory, which was launched in 2009. The observatory contains a photometer, a sophisticated instrument that measures how much light stars emit. This allows astronomers to detect when the transit of the other stars and planets when transiting stars. In announcing the (so far) unique find, NASA noted that the Kepler 16b probably contains no liquid water and is uninhabitable because of its orbit lies outside the habitable zone star. However, NASA has confirmed that the discovery "confirms a new class of planetary systems that could harbor life."Newly Discovered Planet Has Two Sunsets, But No One Sees