New planets discovered

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Posted on 13 January 2012

Keele astrophysicist, John Taylor, has had an article published in Nature on the discovery of two new planets.  The discovery is of a new family of planets, which orbit a pair of stars rather than a single one, called circumbinary planets.

The existence of circumbinary planets orbiting a pair of normal stars was established with the discovery of the Kepler-16 binary system, although the prevalence of such planets has been unclear. From a sample of 750 systems monitored by the Kepler spacecraft two circumbinary planets, Kepler-34 b and Kepler-35 b, both of which are gas giants, have been discovered. By extrapolating the observed rate of circumbinary planets, the authors estimate that around one per cent of close binary stars have nearby giant planets with closely aligned orbits. This calculation implies a Galactic population of at least several million circumbinary planets.

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