(CN) - As technology advances, the boundary between science fiction and reality seems to be growing increasingly thin.

Astronomers at Northwestern University have now photographed a rare giant planet orbiting a pair of suns - a configuration reminiscent of the "Star Wars" planet known as Tatooine. Even more astonishing, this world hugs these suns more closely than any previously imaged circumbinary planet.

The findings, published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, are incredibly rare. Only a small fraction of the discovered 6,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, orbit binary suns. Even less of those have been accurately captured in direct images showing either the binary or the planet.

"Imaging both the planet and the binary is interesting because it's the only type of planetary system where we can trace both the orbit of the binary star and the planet in the sky at the same time," said Jason Wang, the study's senior author and an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern. "We're excited to keep watching it in the future as they move, so we can see how the three bodies move across the sky."

An exoplanets expert, Wang has spent years conducting field research using the Chile-based Gemini Planet Imager (GPI), a specialized telescope designed to look incomprehensibly long distances. By blocking out glare created by stars and using a coronagraph to sharpen images, the GPI was revolutionary in capturing images of planets light-years away.

"I spent most of my time during my Ph.D. just looking for planets," said Wang, noting he traveled to Chile several times to use the imager. "During the instrument's lifetime, we observed more than 500 stars and found only one new planet. It would have been nice to have seen more, but it did tell us something about just how rare exoplanets are."

In preparation for the imager's nearing upgrade and relocation to Hawaii, Wang revisited the collected images nearly a decade after completing his Ph.D. He didn't think he'd find any new planets but thought the Northwestern team "should do our due diligence and check carefully anyway."

Nathalie Jones, the study's lead author and a graduate fellow at Northwestern's Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics, made the discovery while cross-referencing the data. An object stood out in the images that seemed to consistently follow a distant star's motions.

Constant movement of stars and other objects is standard in space, but two things moving in synchronicity is what catches astronomers' eyes, a telltale sign of orbiting. Astronomers also look at how light changes - light reflecting off planets looks very different from simple starlight.

After taking a deeper look at the orbiting object, it became clear that a new planet had gone unnoticed when the images were previously captured by the GPI in 2016. And this planet is a big one, weighing in at six times the size of Jupiter.

The young planet, dubbed "HD 143811 (AB)b" by University of Exeter astronomers who reported the planet's discovery in September, is around 13 million years old, located about 446 light-years from Earth. That's just "the next town over" from our local solar system's neighborhood, explained Wang.

But the planet's orbit around two host stars is what's really left the astronomers starstruck. The stars themselves revolve tightly around each other, completing one revolution in just over two weeks. Yet the planet's own orbit crawls at a snail's pace - one revolution is estimated to take around 300 years.

"You have this really tight binary, where stars are dancing around each other really fast," Wang said. "Then there is this really slow planet, orbiting around them from far away."

One thing's for sure: Any lucky residents of the planet have prime seats for some fantastic sunrises and sunsets.

For now, Jones has requested more telescope time and continues to reanalyze the previously collected data in search of any other missed objects.

Source: Courthouse News Service