'Tatooine' gives first direct proof of 2-sun planet

Photo caption: Luke Skywalker looks out over a desert dominated by two setting suns in an iconic scene from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Astronomers are now confirming the first direct evidence that planets with two suns do exist.

Scientists at NASA and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute [SETI] are informally calling the newly discovered world Tatooine, as homage to Skywalker's planet imagined by George Lucas.

The so-called circumbinary planet has been dubbed with an official name that's much less interesting: Kepler-16b.

Unlike the tagline of the Star Wars saga, Tatooine is not located in a "galaxy far, far away," it's right in our own backyard - relatively - about 200 light years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Getting to Tatooine aboard a spacecraft traveling at light speed - 186,282 miles per second - would take about two centuries. (The closest star to earth outside our solar system is about 4 light years away.)



(Via Light Years)

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