(PhysOrg.com) -- Although cold and gaseous rather than a desert world, the newfound planet Kepler-16b is still the closest astronomers have come to discovering Luke Skywalker's home world of Tatooine. Like Tatooine, Kepler-16b enjoys a double sunset as it circles a pair of stars approximately 200 light-years from Earth. It's not thought to harbor life, but its discovery demonstrates the diversity of planets in our galaxy.
'Kepler-16b is the first confirmed, unambiguous example of a circumbinary planet - a planet orbiting not one, but two stars," said Josh Carter of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "Once again, we're finding that our solar system is only one example of the variety of planetary systems Nature can create.'
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Bob-C
