A New Star System Discovered
Yes, a new star system with five stars was found in by astronomers at the Open University in the UK. No, it is not a pun on the phrase “five-star.” There actually is a star systems with five suns around a huge center of gravity out there, and we’ve recently discovered it.
A Brief description of the five star system
The five star system, or a quintuple star system if you want to avoid confusion, was presented in Llandudno, Wales, at a National Astronomy Meeting at Veneu Crymru. The press release for this conference, which officially let the science community know about the amazing find among other great research, can be found here.
What’s even cooler about this five star system is that the stars are not all that is unique about the system. It is the fact that it has two binary stars that eclipse every now and then. If you thought one eclipse was cool, what about a double?
All experts agree, and even the layman can as well, that finding a five star system that is connected together as this one is, or even just a five star system alone, is extremely rare, not to mention extremely lucky.
Who found it?
Astronomers with the SuperWasp program, which has been successful in finding exoplanets over the years since it was started in 2003, found some additional eclipses one day in the light curve it was studying. The rest is history. The five star system is about 250 light years away from the constellation Ursa Major.
But any planets circling the stars wouldn’t sleep much
Why is that? Because there would be nothing but daylight most of the year, or the time it takes to complete one full cycle around the stars. There is some night, but that is for a very short time in comparison.
Many are excited by this new scientific find and await to see what further studies tell us. By studying this system, we can better understand how other systems like it get created in the variety of ways they do, and maybe even more about our origins.
