Tatooine in Science
The California Institute of Technology reported on July 13, 2005 that Maciej Konacki, a senior postdoctoral scholar in planetary science, discovered a planet orbiting a triple-star system known as HD 188753 in the constellation Cygnus about 149 light-years from Earth. It is the first planet to be discovered orbiting a multi-star system, and Konacki refers to planets of this type as "Tatooine planets" after Luke Skywalker's home world.
More recently, the South African Astronomical Observatory reported on June 14, 2011 that Drs. Stephen Potter and Encarni Romero-Colmenero and collaborators have found evidence for the existence of an extraordinary planetary system where two giant planets are orbiting a close pair of "suns" (known as UZ For) similar to the binary star system of Tatooine.
Planet Kepler-16b orbits two stars in a system about 200 light-years away, in the constellation Cygnus. Kepler-16b circles the two stars at a distance of 65 million miles, while the stars themselves circle each other more closely. Some astronomers refer to Kepler-16b informally as Tatooine, which also has two suns.
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