Scientists have made an interesting discovery – a planet that orbits two suns! As you may recall from Star Wars, Luke Skywalker hails from a planet that enjoys double sunsets. This coincidence was talked about during NASA’s announcement of the newly discovered planet, Kepler 16.

The planet is about as large as Saturn, and thought to be half-gassy. The suns that orbit Kepler 16b are smaller than our sun and orbit each other once every 41 days.

The planet was found by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. The Kepler telescope was launched in 2009 and detects periodic dips in light in a certain part of the sky. Once these dips are detected, scientists use software to determine whether a planet caused the dips in light. After observing these changes in light, they found that the only thing that could cause this effect was two suns passing each other repeatedly. This is what led to the discovery of Kepler 16.

via: cosmic log