Planet-Forming Disk Discovered Orbiting Binary System
11 Jun 2009, 02:42 UTC
Science fiction is lousy with examples of planets that orbit a system of two suns. Tatooine, in the Star Wars saga, is endowed with a pair of suns to light up the sky, as is the planet Magrathea in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It would indeed be quite a spectacle to wake up to more than one Sun every day for us who have only one. This sight may entirely be possible to view around the young binary star system V4046 Sagittarii, as new images from the Smithsonian’s Submillimeter Array (SMA) have confirmed the existence of a molecular cloud - which could harbor, or later produce planets - orbiting the twin stars. This is the first time that evidence of planetary formation around a binary system of stars has been uncovered.
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© nick for Universe Today, 2009. |
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