New Horizons in Cosmic Exploration: A Twin-Star Wonder Emerges

An international team of researchers has discovered a new ‘Tatooine’ – an exoplanet that orbits around two stars. This breakthrough was made while studying the nearby star system HD 143811 in the constellation of Lupus, as reported by Northwestern University in the USA. The object was found to be six times closer to its stars than any other known planets of this type.

Currently, we know of about six thousand exoplanets, of which only a small fraction are ‘Tatooines’. An even smaller number of these exoplanets have been directly studied through simultaneous observations of star disks and their satellites. Such observations are particularly fascinating, as they allow us to simultaneously determine the orbit of the star and the orbit of the ‘Tatooine’.

Unique Observations and Difficult Discoveries

Associate Professor Jason Wang, NWU.

This term describes a rare class of exoplanets that orbit in binary or even triple systems. The first such world was discovered by the Kepler telescope in 2011, and since then, astronomers have found less than two dozen such objects. Scientists suggest that gravitational interactions between stars in binary systems complicate the formation of stable planets, making ‘Tatooines’ a genuine rarity.

Revolutionary Techniques Enhance Discovery

The new object was identified during a re-analysis of archival data from the Gemini-South telescope, obtained from 2016–2019 while observing young stars in the constellation of Lupus. Previously, no planets had been found in these systems; however, modern image processing algorithms have revealed signs of exoplanets that went unnoticed in past studies. Recent advancements in exoplanet discovery include improved observational techniques and more sophisticated algorithms, enabling the detection of planets in intricate systems. Since 2020, missions like TESS and the James Webb Space Telescope have greatly contributed to this field, revealing cosmic wonders that were once beyond reach.