Planet orbiting 2 suns

[pa___ul3]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/...-environment-14940885

Does anyone know how that would work?

Does the planet orbit the smaller sun which is orbiting the larger sun or would the planet orbit the two as if it were one odd shaped body?

I'm confused by this!

[bibblebub]

Please forgive the flippancy but that George Lucas will resort to anything to sell his new Blu-ray boxset of Star Wars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEUGF3NGbPg

[Huderon]

http://www.popsci.com...st-star-wars-tatooine includes an animation that shows how it works - the smaller of the two suns orbits the larger and the planet orbits both.

[jake-the-peg]

http://www.sciencemag...content/333/6049/1602

//We report the detection of a planet whose orbit surrounds a pair of low-mass stars//

Does that help?

There are other possibilities but in this case it seems that the planet orbits both stars

[mibn2cweus]

Some applets - http://faculty.ifmo.r...jects/Collection.html

[Clanad]

In all binary star systems, the stars orbit their relative center of mass. In other words, one doesn't orbit the other, they both orbit a central point determined by the combined masses of both. In the case of Kepler-16b, the newly discovered planet appears to orbit both stars ... By the way, binary systems are very common so it would be expected to locate many other examples of the newly discovered Kepler-16b phenomenon...

[AB Editor]

Awesome.

[Old_Geezer]

I'm a little amazed that a planet orbiting both would be a stable situation. Surely the gravitational pull varies as it goes around. Perhaps it is so far out the difference isn't significant.

[pa___ul3]

that's what I was thinking O_G, I'm assuming the gravitational pull of the larger star is much greater than that of the smaller so thought that would make it unstable. I'd have thought it's partial orbit of the larger star would have to be at a greater distance from the smaller star to make the relative gravitational pull the same.
I can't watch the animation in Huderon's link so I'll have to wait to get home.
Grateful I'm a BA now, science makes me want to ask far too many questions!

[jake-the-peg]

Well all bodies orbit their combined centre of mass Clanad

It's just where one body "orbits the other " that combined centre of mass is inside one of the bodies - which is the definition of a satellite body rather than a twin.

I'm sure there are some star systems where one is small enough for that to be the case.



In terms of stability - No - it's not - well not mathematically either.

It's called the 3 body problem. You can't definatively prove that any 3 bodies orbiting each other have stable orbits.

Poincare first came across this and it was the very start of chaos theory.

And yes it means that it cannot be definitively shown that our solar system is stable either!

[notasyoungasiwas]

Agree with you Ed ABSOLUTELY awesome !!