The artist impression above shows how the system, called 1SWASP J093010.78+533859.5, may look.
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Further analysis by Lohr’s team confirmed, in a study published in June in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the fifth star suggested in the 2014 paper. Yeah, the star system consists of two sets of eclipsing binary stars and a single one. At the time, Lohr and his team thought the system consisted of four stars – two binary stars gravitationally locked together, which would have been rare enough in itself.
They do this because they orbit around a central mass that keeps them in a fixed position. Five stars connected is practically unheard of; the astronomers from Open University in the United Kingdom who wrote the report claimed only five known doubly eclipsing quadruple formations at the time of their findings.
“There could sometimes be no fewer than five suns of different brightnesses lighting up the landscape”.
Tatooine is perhaps passé now and the latest is the five star system that has been spotted by astronomers high up in the celestial territory. He believes that there are strong reasons for planets in the orbit around both the binaries.
It was discovered in data gathered by the SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) project.
“Days would have dramatically varying light levels as the different stars were eclipsed”, Lohr added. Finally, they calculated that a fifth star is also present.
In the film Pitch Black, the characters find themselves stranded on a planet with three suns that is bathed in sunlight for 22 years before being plunged into a month-long darkness.
The astronomers say that the system is one of its own kind.
The iconic image from Star Wars is now obsolete.
They orbit around a common centre of gravity and are found in the constellation of Ursa Major that is around 250 light years away from earth.
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All of the stars are smaller and cooler than our Sun, but collectively the system is still bright enough to be seen with small telescopes. Incidentally, the lone star was close enough to be gravitationally bounded in a five-star system. Using a technique similar to how astronomers discover distant exoplanets, a team of astronomers led by Marcus Lohr of the Open University, UK, was able to monitor and analyze changing light curves to uncover the unique details of this remarkable quintuple star system. That means these stars orbit around each other blocking a few or all of the other star’s light in our path of vision from earth. Of the two binaries, the star couple in one of the binaries is so close that they share outer atmosphere.
