Planets Circling Around Twin Suns Thursday, February 2, 2012 TAU
researcher participated in NASA team that discovered two new
planets 5,000 light years from Earth Artist's rendering of the
double-suns phenomenon. Courtesy University of California San
Diego. In the last two decades, the study of extrasolar planets
— those that lie outside our own solar system — has become one
of the most important fields of astrophysics. Now a National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) team that includes
Prof. Tsevi Mazeh of Tel Aviv University's Department of
Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Director of the Wise
Observatory has discovered two new planets, named Kepler-34 and
Kepler-35, each of which revolves around its own double suns.
Together with Kepler-16, discovered a few months ago, there are
now three such known systems in the galaxy. According to Prof.
Mazeh, these discoveries indicate that planets revolving around
binary suns (suns that are formed as a pair) are a common
phenomenon. Double stars or suns a