A breakthrough research mission just revealed a fascinating exoplanet orbiting two stars at the same time — further proving that space is filled with endless wonders to uncover. That may sound a bit cliche, but it's 100 percent true. Something about space is discovered every single day. Whether it be a planet, supernova, or anything in between, astronomers are constantly digging up new information about what lies beyond our home on Earth.

In 2021 alone, there have been a few particularly noteworthy findings. A few days ago, Hubble revealed a strange 'superbubble' that's tearing apart a faraway nebula. Astronomers also used a new detection method to find a black hole outside the Milky Way, in addition to finding the first planet outside of our galaxy. These discoveries may not impact our day-to-day life, yet they're critically important to better understand the universe that we live in.

Adding to the list of groundbreaking discoveries this year, a group of astronomers just detected a new circumbinary exoplanet — in other words, a planet outside of our Solar System that's orbiting two stars. The planet in question is known as TIC 172900988b. It's a large gas planet with a radius similar to Jupiter's, but its mass is "several times" greater. The really fascinating thing, however, is that it's simultaneously orbiting two stars. These circumbinary planets are extremely rare in space research. As explained by scientist Nader Haghighipour, however, the discovery of TIC 172900988b could make similar findings much more common in the near future.

How Researchers Found This Unique Exoplanet


For years now, the most common detection method for circumbinary planets has been something called 'transit photometry.' As Haghighipour describes, this "measures drops in starlight caused by those planets whose orbits are oriented in space such that they periodically pass between their stars and the telescope. In this technique, the measurements of the decrease in the intensity of the light of a star is used to infer the existence of a planet." It's a fairly reliable technique for making such discoveries, but the downside is that it requires at least three 'transit events' to calculate the orbital path of a planet. With circumbinary planets, this is a problem "when a planet orbits a double-star system because transits will not happen with same interval over the same star. The planet may transit one star and then transit the other before transiting the first star again, and so on."

In the case of TIC 172900988b, astronomers detected it much more quickly using a two transit method. It was accomplished using the TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) telescope and Kepler telescope. If TESS finds two transits during one of its 27-day observations, astronomers "will be able to detect the planet." This is what happened with TIC 172900988b. The planet passed by its primary star, passed by the secondary star five days later, and TESS was able to collect that data reliably and accurately.

Discoveries like this open up a door of possibilities for what can happen in the future. Finding TIC 172900988b is a big deal on its own, and now that the two transit method has proven effective, that means more circumbinary planets could be found soon. Haghighipour says so themself, commenting, "This discovery demonstrates that our new technique works and will be able to find many more planets." It's unclear how many more circumbinary exoplanets are out there, but with this new technique available, they can't stay hidden forever.