05 The MoonWalk APRIL 2009

“SPEED OF DARK”

Dark is the
absence of Light,
or Light is the
absence of
Dark...?

A PLANET IN A CLOSE-
KNIT TRIPLE-
STAR
Once again, it seems that whatever the imagination of human
beings can create, the Universe will match it.
No, you are not watching The suns of Tatooine, the home planet
of Luke Skywalker from "Star Wars"?
An extrasolar planet under three suns has been discovered in the
constellation Cygnus by a planetary scientist at the California
Institute of Technology using the 10-meter Keck I telescope in Hawaii.
This rambunctious stellar family is called HD188753 and is located
149 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Its gas giant planet,
called HD 188753 Ab, referred as “Tatooine planet”, is 1.14 times the
mass of Jupiter. The planet zips around the system's main star
(yellow, center) every 3.3 days, while the main star is circled every
25.7 years by a dancing duo of stars (yellow and orange, outer orbit).
The star pair is locked in a 156-day orbit. This eccentric star family is
a cramped bunch; the distance between the main star and the outer
pair of stars is about the same as that between the Sun and Saturn.
Imagine sunrise and sunsets on this planet. You cant stop your
creativity, vision and fancy at any specific point. Just keep pondering.

Though multiple-star systems like this one are common in the

universe, astronomers were surprised to find a planet living in such
compact quarters. Given that it has to contend with the gravitational
pull of three bodies, promises to seriously challenge our current
understanding of how planets are formed.