LONDON: A gas giant 3,700 light years away is the largest planet yet to be found orbiting two stars, scientists have revealed.
Dubbed Kepler-1647b, the Jupiter-like planet lies in the constellation Cygnus, and was spotted by astronomers examining data from the Kepler space telescope – an instrument launched in 2009 to look for potentially habitable planets beyond our solar system.
Not only is it the largest “circumbinary” planet, it also has one of the longest orbits ever recorded for a transiting planet, taking 1,107 days to complete its circuit.
But it isn’t the only body on the move. As Kepler-1647b travels around the system, the two stars are, themselves, in orbit around each other.
“Every 11 days the stars eclipse each other, so it is like a clock,” said Veselin Kostov, lead author of the new research from Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center. For an observer watching from Kepler-1647b, that could lead to an intriguing spectacle.
“Sometimes one will be able to see first the larger star rise or set followed by the smaller one,” said Tobias Cornelius Hinse, a co-author of the research from the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. “But, under special circumstances, one could also imagine [seeing] only one star setting or rising, when the smaller star is hiding behind the larger one during sunrise or sunset.”
Presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society by an international team of scientists, the research is based on data from the Kepler space telescope, together with a host of ground-based measurements and computer models.
