Crowdsourcing Science: Citizen Astronomers Discover Rare Planetary System

Amateur  astronomers with Planethunters.org  and Yale University have announced the discovery of an unusual solar system in deep space. The system contains a gas giant, dubbed PH1,  approximately the size of Neptune circling a binary star.  What makes it unusual is that orbiting much further out, roughly 1000 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, is yet another binary star system.

The  discovery, which was made by Planet Hunter volunteers analyzing data from the Kepler space telescope, and then confirmed by astronomers using the Keck observatory in Hawaii, is to date the only confirned case of a circumbinary planet in a four star system.

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