Astronomers have discovered the largest “Tatooine” in the constellation Cygnus – RIA Novosti

MOSCOW, June 14 – RIA Novosti . Scientists have discovered in the constellation Cygnus the unusual pair of stars around which revolves planeta- “Tataouine” to a record high weight – it is about as heavy as Jupiter, according to a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal

“For. all the time, “Kepler” we had a single number of cases where this planet could pass across the disk of both stars and overshadow them -. the fact that we managed to find it is a miracle we did not expect to see anything like that, because such a planet is usually “leak” through our “network of observations,” but when we saw it the first pass, and realized that it exists, we are very inspired, “- said Stephen Kane (Stephen Kane) from the University of San Francisco (USA)

Kane and his colleagues under the direction of William Borutski (William Borucki), former head of the mission “Kepler”, made this discovery by observing the double star Kepler-1647 – a pair of two yellow sun-like stars, far away from us at a distance of 3, 7 thousand light-years away towards the constellation of Cygnus.

around these stars, as shown by observations with the “Kepler”, revolves largest exoplanet, completes one orbit around the two halves of the Kepler-1647 for 1107 days, or three earth of the year. Since the “Kepler” is working in orbit seven years during which time scientists have been able to see at least three passes of the planet across the disk of its star, which significantly complicate its detection and confirmation of its existence.

On the discovery of this planet Borutski and his colleagues have already said in December last year, but they had to spend a few months to clarify its mass and orbital characteristics. It turned out that the mass new “Tatooine” Kepler-1647b clearly superior to their “colleagues” – it is about 480 times the mass of Earth and 1.52 times the mass of Jupiter, and its radius is 1.06 times more than Jupiter

in contrast, the weight of the previous “record holder” – the planet Kepler-34b, opened in 2012, is only 76% of the mass of Jupiter, and its radius is approximately equal to that enjoyed by Saturn.

Interestingly, Kepler-1647b dye is within the so-called “habitable zone”. Of course, living on the surface can hardly exist, since it is a gas giant, on the other hand, at its moons water can exist in liquid form, which opens the way for the emergence of primitive microbes. The discovery of such a moon, astronomers tell us, it would be even more interesting event.

The opening of the new “Tatooine”, much larger in size than all previous findings, says that can be produced all around binary stars options planets – from analog to Earth and the gas giants, the scientists conclude

.