Scientists uncover a rare exoplanet that orbits two suns
By Stephen Beech
An extraordinary, Tatooine-like exoplanet orbiting a binary star system has been identified. The discovery highlights a world that is enormously larger than Jupiter—about six times its size—yet formed surprisingly early, only 50 million years after the dinosaurs vanished.
This planet hugs its two host stars more closely than any other directly imaged planet in a binary system, offering a unique glimpse into planetary dynamics in multi-star environments.
Finding a planet outside our solar system is already remarkable; the odds rise even higher when that planet orbits two stars. The new world sits much closer to its stellar pair than previously known exoplanets do. A study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters confirms this unusually tight configuration.
For many, the image of Luke Skywalker gazing at the twin suns of Tatooine resonates with this discovery, yet this finding provides genuine, real-world insight into how planets form and move around multiple stars.
Senior study author Dr. Jason Wang from Northwestern University notes that among the roughly 6,000 confirmed exoplanets, only a tiny fraction (if any) reside in binary systems that we can directly image. Imaging both the planet and the binary star is rare and valuable because it allows researchers to observe the orbital dancing of all three bodies in the sky at once. The team plans to monitor the system over time to watch how their motions evolve.
The exoplanet was identified by Northwestern researchers who re-examined years-old data. When Dr. Wang was a doctoral student, he helped build the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), a specialized instrument designed to capture distant worlds by suppressing the bright glare of their host stars. Initially operated at the Gemini South telescope in Chile, GPI uses adaptive optics and a coronagraph to sharpen images of faint planets orbiting bright stars.
Reflecting on those early efforts, Wang recalls traveling to Chile and dedicating much of his Ph.D. years to hunting for planets. Over the instrument’s lifetime, the team observed more than 500 stars and found only one new planet—an outcome that underscored how rare exoplanets can be.
Nearly a decade later, lead author Nathalie Jones revisited the data. Wang admits he didn’t expect new discoveries but insisted on thorough checks. Jones cross-referenced GPI observations from 2016–2019 with data from the Keck Observatory and spotted a faint object that consistently traced the star’s motion across the sky.
As Jones explains, stars don’t stand still in the galaxy; objects bound to them should move in concert with their host. If an object moves independently, it may be a background star passing through. But if the object shares the star’s motion, it signals a bound planet.
By analyzing both spectral signatures and light patterns, the team confirmed the object as a planet captured by GPI in 2016, though it had previously slipped through unnoticed. A European consortium led by the University of Exeter independently reanalyzed the data and reached the same conclusion, reinforcing the discovery.
The planet, while hotter than any planet in our solar system, sits cooler than many other directly imaged exoplanets. It lies about 446 light-years away, a distance that Northwestern researchers describe as not exactly local but comparatively close—“the next town over” in cosmic terms.
Formed roughly 13 million years ago, the planet is exceptionally young by astronomical standards. Wang notes that while 13 million years sounds long, it is 50 million years after the dinosaurs disappeared on Earth, a relatively brief moment in the universe’s timeline, which means the planet still retains heat from its formation.
Another striking feature is the system’s architecture: the two stars orbit each other very tightly, completing one revolution every 18 days. In contrast, the planet takes about 300 years to complete a single orbit around the pair—about the length of Pluto’s journey around the Sun.
Wang explains the dynamic: a fast, compact binary pair with a distant, slow-moving planet. The researchers aren’t yet sure how the system formed, but they suspect the binary stars emerged first, with the planet forming within their shared gravitational disk.
Despite the excitement, much remains unknown. Since only a few dozen similar dual-star planets have been detected, more data is needed to construct a comprehensive picture of how such systems come to be and evolve.
The Northwestern team intends to keep monitoring the system to refine the orbital paths of both the planet and the binary stars, shedding light on their mutual gravitational interactions. Jones is also pursuing a reanalysis of older data to identify any other objects that might have been overlooked, acknowledging that a few suspicious signals still deserve closer scrutiny.
