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(Photo credit: R. Hurt (SSC) / JPL-Caltech / NASA -- via MSNBC)
NASA Discovers "Real-Life Tatooine"

Posted By Eric on September 15, 2011

What a week it's been for NASA and Star Wars! Just days after announcing the discovery of a "real-life Alderaan" (a planet constantly being bombarded by destructive x-rays), the space agency revealed today that it has found a planet "that's absolutely known to circle two stars."

MSNBC reports the following:

"Once again, what used to be science fiction has turned into reality," said Carnegie Institution astronomer Alan Boss, a member of the team for NASA's Kepler mission and a co-author of a paper on the discovery in the journal Science.

[...]

Luke probably couldn't stand on the surface of Kepler-16b, which orbits a red and orange star 200 light-years from Earth, and it certainly wouldn't be a desert. The planet is most like Saturn in our own solar system ? too cold for life as we know it, most likely with a thick, gassy atmosphere. "This one's just outside the habitable zone," the paper's lead author, SETI Institute astronomer Laurance Doyle, told me.

But if Han Solo were to park the Millennium Falcon on one of Kepler-16b's hypothetical moons, there'd be plenty of double-sunsets. In fact, because the two suns orbit each other, each sunset would bring a different configuration, with the small red sun occasionally crossing over the larger orange one. "You might get two eclipses every 41 days," Doyle said.

NASA discussed its finding in a press conference today, and as we reported on Tuesday, the panel at the briefing included ILM's John Knoll.

Click through to MSNBC's Cosmic Log to read more about the discovery of this "real-life Tatooine"!

UPDATE: Space.com has an interview with Laurance Doyle about his discovery. Here's a quote from that Q&A:

"The minute we knew it was a circumbinary planet, I emailed a colleague and said, 'We should ask George Lucas if we can nickname it Tatooine.'

The point is that science fiction can become science fact. We don?t just have to escape. The real universe is out there and even more amazing than we can imagine. It's good to check with nature and reality I think."

And if you want more connections between Star Wars and our universe, check out Space.com's list of "10 Real Alien Worlds That Resemble 'Star Wars' Planets."

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