Astronomers have discovered a new planet that is eerily similar to Tatooine, the desert planet from the famous Star Wars movies. The planet has been named BEBOP-1 c, and here are all the details you need to know.
What is BEBOP-1c?
BEBOP-1c is named after its project that collected the data known as Binaries Escorted By Orbiting Planets. The BEBOP-1 project is also known as TOI-1338.
It is a gas giant planet that orbits two stars. It is the second planet that is discovered in the BEBOP-1 system, and it is the first planet to be discovered in a circumbinary system that is located in the habitable zone of its stars.
According to the news published in Nature Astronomy, “Circumbinary planets are planets that orbit both stars of a central binary. They were once confined to science fiction, but the discovery of Kepler-16 b paved the way for the detection of 14 transiting planets in 12 binary systems by the Kepler2 and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) missions.”
The first circumbinary planet was discovered in 2019 by NASA’s TESS mission and it is known as TOI-1338b.
BEBOP-1c is about 65 times the mass of Earth, and it has an orbital period of 215 days and it is the first ever circumbinary planet that has radio velocity and it can be used to discover other exoplanets.
David Martin, co-author of the study and NASA Sagan Fellow in astronomy at The Ohio State University said, “When a planet orbits two stars, it can be a bit more complicated to find because both of its stars are also moving through space”.
“So how we can detect these stars’ exoplanets, and the way in which they are formed, are all quite different”, he added.
Only 12 binary systems are currently known to host circumbinary planets. Astronomers who made this new discovery, are mentioned in the journal Nature Astronomy. They are hopeful that it marks progress in how humans search for and detect exoplanets in these unique systems.
The vast majority of these exoplanets are discovered by the transit method. The journal Nature Astronomy states “To increase the number of known circumbinary planets, and to provide accurate masses for systems discovered with the transit method, we initiated a radial-velocity observing survey dedicated to circumbinary planet detection called binaries escorted by orbiting planets (BEBOP).”
“Systems followed by BEBOP are on average four visual magnitudes brighter than circumbinary systems identified with Kepler. Radial velocities are less restricted to the edge-on and shorter orbital periods found by the transit method”, it added.
Source: Nature Astronomy
It is the first planet to be discovered in a circumbinary system that is located in the habitable zone of its stars.
The discovery suggests that circumbinary planets may be more common than previously thought and that it may be possible to find more circumbinary planets by looking for them in the habitable zones of their stars.
Source: Nature Astronomy
In the above image, the journal Nature describes the coloured areas as:
- “The conservative habitable zone is shown by the dark green region
- The optimistic habitable zone is shown by the light green region.
- The binary stars are marked by the blue star symbols in the centre.
- The red-shaded region denotes the instability region surrounding the binary stars”
To conclude, astronomers are excited about the possibility of life on BEBOP-1c. They are planning to continue to study the planet in an effort to learn more about its atmosphere, surface, and potential for life. If life is found on BEBOP-1c, it would be a major discovery that would change our understanding of the universe.
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