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Planet Has Four Suns: Amateur Astronomy Finds Tatooine Times Two
Step aside Tatooine. A newfound planet known as PH1 has not two but four suns, scientists announced this week.
Odd system is the first discovered by amateur planet hunters.
Previously, six other planets had been found circling double stars, but “this is the first planet discovered in a four-star system,” Yale planetary astronomer Megan Schwamb said Monday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences in Reno, Nevada.
PH1, which is about 6.2 times Earth’s width, orbits two of the stars, which are themselves orbited by a second pair.
One of the primary stars is super bright and 1.7 times larger than our sun. The other is dimmer and is only 41 percent the width of our sun. PH1 circles these two at about two-thirds the distance of Earth from our sun.