Multiple Planets Orbiting TWO Stars Discovered

NASA's Kepler Discovers Multiple Planets Orbiting a Pair of Stars

by Staff Writers
  Washington DC (SPX) Sep 03, 2012

Coming less than a year after the announcement of the first circumbinary planet, Kepler-16b, NASA's Kepler mission has discovered multiple transiting planets orbiting two suns for the first time. This system, known as a circumbinary planetary system, is 4,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus.
This discovery proves that more than one planet can form and persist in the stressful realm of a binary star and demonstrates the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy.




The planets Kepler-47b and Kepler-47c: Kepler-47b has three times the radius of earth and orbits the pair of stars in less than 50 days while Kepler-47c is thought to be a gaseous giant, slightly larger than Neptune with an orbital period of 303 days. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle. For a larger version of this image please go here.

More: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASAs_Kepler_Discovers_Multiple_Planets_Orbiting_a_Pair_of_Stars_999.html

Source: SpaceDaily.com

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Glenn A. Walsh, Project Director,
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