Friday, Jul 15, 2005
Friday, Jul 15, 2005 |
| International | ||||
|
News:
Front Page |
National |
Tamil Nadu |
Andhra Pradesh |
Karnataka |
Kerala |
New Delhi |
Other States |
International |
Opinion |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
Engagements |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary | International
LONDON: An astronomer has identified a planet with three suns far away in the galaxy the first of a class dubbed ``Tatooine planets'' after the home of Luke Skywalker, the young hero of the Star Wars films. Maciej Konacki, of the California Institute of Technology, describes in the magazine Nature how he trained a 10-metre telescope on three stars 149 light years from Earth, and found they shared a planet slightly larger than Jupiter. The stars are about as close to each other as Saturn is to the sun. ``The environment in which this planet exists is quite spectacular,'' Dr. Konacki said. ``With three suns, the sky view must be out of this world, literally and figuratively.'' In this region of the galaxy binary stars and even multiple star systems — heavenly bodies caught in a complex gravitational waltz — are more frequent than single stars. But no one expected that a planet could either form or survive for long in a group of triple suns. No life could survive there, but the outlook from the planet would be pretty bright.
— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Printer friendly
page
News:
Front Page |
National |
Tamil Nadu |
Andhra Pradesh |
Karnataka |
Kerala |
New Delhi |
Other States |
International |
Opinion |
Business |
Sport |
Miscellaneous |
Engagements |
|
|
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | The Hindu eBooks | The Hindu Images | Home |
Copyright © 2005, The
Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu
|
