Sunday, January 15, 2006

More Space News



From Space.com:

Worlds With Multiple Suns Abundant

That's good news in case we need to get off the planet. More places to go.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Two new studies suggest that planet formation around multiple star systems may be more common than previously thought.

The findings were presented here at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

One study, lead by doctoral student Deepak Raghavan from Georgia State University, confirmed that 29 planet-harboring star systems also contained a second star; three actually had two companions and were triple star systems.

Raghavan and his team combed through archived star data to identify 131 star systems with planets that scientists had previously suspected of having companion stars. They then used telescopes at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile to confirm the results and to also look for new systems with multiple stars.

The group found one previously unknown stellar companion around HD 38529, a star known to have planets but until now was thought to be a single star system.

1 comment:

Hecate said...

Love the space stories.