An international team of astronomers is the first to apply an old technique to discover a new type of planet that orbits two stars – what is known as a circumbinary planet. As an added bonus, researchers found a second planet that is orbiting the same two stars, which is only the second confirmed multi-planet circumbinary system found to date. The study was published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. 

“When a planet orbits two stars, it can be a bit more complicated to find because both of its stars are also moving through space,” said David Martin, co-author of the study and NASA Sagan Fellow in astronomy at The Ohio State University. “So how we can detect these stars’ exoplanets, and the way in which they are formed, are all quite different.”