Kepler discovers its 10th twin sunned Tatooine

Four years ago, when the Kepler mission helped locate Kepler-16b, the news was incredible. For the first time, we had confirmed a planet orbiting two stars, an idea that seemed at home on the twin-sunned "Star Wars" planet Tatooine. Now, researchers have announced the discovery of the 10th such system in what seems a relatively short space of time. Kepler-453b, of the system Kepler-453, is what is known as a circumbinary planet, orbiting two stars which are themselves locked into orbit with each other. The discovery of Kepler-453b was an extraordinarily lucky one. Because it orbits two stars, the planet's tilt is wobbly and erratic. Exoplanets are already hard to see, usually located by what is known as the "transit method", which allows astronomers to detect when a planet is passing in between us and a star when that star's light dims. Because of Kepler 453b's wobble only 9 percent of its transits are detectable. The next time Kepler-453b will be visible to astronomers won't be until the year 2066. "If we had observed this planet earlier or later than we did, we would have seen nothing and assumed there was no planet there," said Stephen Kane, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University, and a member of the team that discovered Kepler-453b. "That suggests that there are a lot more of these kinds of planets than we are thinking, and we're just looking at the wrong time." http://www.cnet.com/news/kepler-discovers-its-10th-tatooine/