A Planet with three Suns!
Three sun rises and three sun sets in single day! You may me
wondering about the Tatooine planet of Star Wars series. If
Tatooine is orbiting two Suns, here things are more complicated.
The HD131399Ab planet reported by the scientists of Arizona
University is part of a triplet star system.
The Stars System:
There are three stars named HD131399A, B & C in this system.
The star HD131399A is a giant white star of size 1.8 times our
sun, whereas HD131399B is slightly smaller than sun and
HD131399C is a dwarf star, half the size of our sun. At the center
of the system lies the star estimated to be 80 percent more massive
than the sun named as HD131399A, which itself is orbited by the
two remaining stars, B and C, at about 300 AU (one AU, or
astronomical unit, equals the average distance between Earth and
the sun). All the while, B and C twirl around each other like a
spinning dumbbell, separated by a distance roughly equal to that
between our sun and Saturn.
Friends of Scientifica,
October
2016