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Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Many Planets Could Circle Twin Suns, NASA Says


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Jedi-to-be Luke Skywalker leaves the Lars Homestead and watches twin suns set on the desert planet Tatooine in this still from 1977's Star Wars.

The latest data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that the universe could be full of binary star systems surrounded by planetary disks, meaning a scene like the one above is astronomically plausible.

Photograph © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.