Amateur Planet Hunters Find First Planet In a Four-Star System 52
The Bad Astronomer writes "For the first time, a planet has been found in a stellar system composed of four stars. The planet, called PH-1, orbits a binary star made of two sun-like stars in a tight orbit. That binary is itself orbited by another binary pair much farther out. Even more amazing, this planet was found by two "citizen scientists", amateurs who participated in Planet Hunters, a project which puts Kepler Observatory data online for lay people to analyze. At least two confirmed planets have been found by this project, but this is the first — ever — in a quaternary system."
Re:Clearly this is Binar 0 (Score:4, Informative)
Or possibly the system that Firefly takes place in. That also had four stars.
Re:Hey everybody! It's Phil Plait! (Score:4, Informative)
You could save the rest of us by linking to said original source.
Re:How about a picture? (Score:2, Informative)
The two central stars have an orbit of 20 days. The planet has an orbit of 137 days, meaning it is 3.5 times from the center of the central stars as they are from each other. Additionally, one of the center stars is about a quarter of the mass of the other, so the center of mass is closer to one than the other. Then the second pair of binaries is at a distance of about 1000 AU from the central stars. The planet's orbit looks like about 0.4 AU (from my calculation, the other distance, times and masses are from the original paper).
So this wouldn't look that different from the solar system, as in there are no crazy figure 8 orbits. Two stars are close together in the center, the planet goes around in a circle around the outside of that. That system and the other binary star system then orbit around each other with a separation much larger than the size of each individual part.