Discovery! 3rd Planet Found in Two-Star 'Tatooine' Star System

[Judi Lynn]

By Mike Wall 5 hours ago Science & Astronomy

Meet Kepler-47d, a puffy planet that lies 3,340 light-years from Earth.



Artist's illustration of the three planets and two stars in the Kepler-47 system, which lies 3,340 light-years from Earth.(Image: © NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)


The only known multiplanet "Tatooine" system just got even more interesting.

A third world lurks in the two-star Kepler-47 system, and it's bigger than its two previously discovered siblings, a new study reports.

"We certainly didn't expect it to be the largest planet in the system," study co-author William Welsh, an astronomer at San Diego State University (SDSU), said in a statement. "This was almost shocking."

. . .

Kepler-47 is a roughly 3.5-billion-year-old system located 3,340 light-years from Earth. One of its stars is quite sunlike, but the other is considerably smaller, harboring just one-third the mass of our sun. The two stars orbit their common center of mass once every 7.45 Earth days.

More:
https://www.space.com/third-alien-planet-in-tatooine-system-kepler-47.html?utm_source=notification

[brush]

1. Do the planets rotate around both stars or just one?

[rogue emissary]

2. The three planets rotate around both stars according to the picture.