Explanation:
If you stay up long enough, you can watch both suns set.
Such might be a common adage from
beings floating in the atmosphere of
Kepler 16b, a planet recently discovered by the space-based Kepler satellite.
The
above animated video shows
how the
planetary system
might look to a visiting spaceship.
Although
multiple star systems are quite common,
this is the first known to have a planet.
Because our Earth is in the
orbital plane of both stars and the planet, each body
is seen to eclipse the others at different times, producing
noticeable drop offs
in the amount of light seen.
The frequent eclipses have given
Kepler
16b the most accurate mass and radius
determination for a planet outside our Solar System.
To find a planet like
Saturn in an orbit like
Venus -- so close to its binary star parents -- was a
surprise and will surely become a focus of research.
