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Planet of Skywalker in "Star Wars" even really exist in our galaxy

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U.S. astronomers have discovered a planet revolving around two stars, such as "planet of Luke Skywalker" in "Star Wars", according to a study published Thursday in the U.S., a discovery that is a first in the history of astronomy.

This exoplanets (planets outside our solar system, No), which orbits around two stars and, therefore, has two sunrises and two asfinţituri was called Kepler-16b.

The planet is at a distance of about 200 light years from Earth.

So far, such a planet called circumbinară, exist only in epic universe of franchise films "Star Wars", which was called Tatooine - a planet covered by deserts and populated by several indigenous humanoid species, such as "sand people".

However, unlike this, Kepler-16b is a gaseous planet cool. Astronomers exclude the possibility that this planet to accommodate life forms.

"Kepler-16b is the first example of circumbinară planet whose existence was confirmed," said Josh Carter, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA), one of the authors of this discovery.

"Once again, we find that our solar system is just an example of the diversity of planetary systems that nature can create them," added the same scientist.

The study, published in U.S. journal Science on 15 September, was the subject of presentations that took place on Thursday at the conference 'Extreme Solar Systems II ", held in Jackson Hole in Wyoming.

Kepler-16b is a table representing a third of the planet Jupiter and a radius equivalent to 74% of its radius, the largest in our solar system. Kepler-16b has a similar size and mass of the planet Saturn.

It orbits around the two stars in 229 days, at an average distance of 104.6 million kilometers.

The two stars are smaller and less warm compared to our sun, and for this reason, Kepler-16b is very cold, temperatures recorded in its surface ranging from -73 ° C and -101 ° C.

The discovery was made by American Kepler telescope. The presence of a planet is detected when it passes in front of its star, which reduces its brightness for a while.

But if Kepler planet-16b, this observation was complicated by the fact that the two stars are eclipsing each other, causing an overall reduction in brightness periodically.

American astronomers have noted, however, that the brightness of the planet falls at regular intervals, even when the two stars do not eclipse, indicating the presence of a third object that revolves around them.

Scientists concluded that the two stars revolve around each ceilelalte, performing a complete rotation in 41 days, at a distance of 33.8 million kilometers.

Opened in 2009 by NASA's Kepler telescope will observe at least three and half years more than 100,000 stars that resemble our sun, the constellations Cygnus and Lira. Kepler's mission is to find planets that, like Earth, could to accommodate life forms in our galaxy, the Milky Way.