An incredible discovery and an ideal example of the importance and power of crowdsourcing!
Originally posted on Planet Hunters:
Today we’re pleased to announce the discovery of the first confirmed planet discovered by Planet Hunters, and it’s a fabulous and unusual world. Labelled ‘Planet Hunters 1′ (or PH1) in a paper released today and submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, it is the first planet in a four-star system. It is a circumbinary planet – one which orbits a double star – and our follow-up observations indicate that there is a second pair of stars approximately 90 billion miles (1000 Astronomical Units) away which are gravitationally bound to the system.
This is much closer than the nearest stars are to the Sun, so anyone viewing the sky from PH1 would have a spectacular view of all four stars. More importantly, this amazing system will help us understand how and where planets can form – producing a stable planet in a system where four different stars are moving about can’t be…
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