Imagine being on a planet which has two or more suns. You will see two suns setting down the horizon one after another.
Astronomers have used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have observed that planetary systems thrive in stellar twins. Since more than half of all stars are twins, or binaries the findings suggest that our Universe is packed with planets orbiting around two suns.
Earlier astronomers thought that planets could form in binaries in which the host stars are quite far away from each other. Of the 200 planets discovered far outside the solar system about 50 orbit one member of the wide stellar duo.
This new study focuses on binaries in which stars are close to each other. The distance between them is zero to 500AU. Until now astronomers were not aware that the separation of stars in a binary can have effect on planet formation.
The new research led to the fact that planetary systems are at least as common around binary stars as they are around single stars. In addition to that they also discovered that planetary systems were more frequent around binaries which have close companion stars.
Researchers also stated that for a planet in a binary system location is everything. Earlier not much was thought about binary systems, but they actually are most common sites for planet formation in our galaxy.
Via: Spaceref
