Strange but true! A newly found exoplanet has three suns

New Delhi: This is a curious case of 16-million-year-old planet. An exoplanet which is twirling between a three-star system.

Recently a team of astronomers at the University of Arizona in Tucson have spotted that a giant planet, situated some 340 light years away from Earth, is orbiting one of the three suns of the tripe-star system.

The newly discovered planet, called HD 131399Ab, that sits in the constellation Centaurus is about four times the size of Jupiter. According to astronomers, the largest of the three suns is about 80% larger than our sun and the exoplanet orbits very slowly around it.

The other two suns also revolve around the largest, and each other. Usually, the orbit of a planet within a multi-star system becomes unstable due to complex and changing gravitational attraction from other star. But surprisingly the orbit of HD 131399Ab is quite stable.

The findings published in the journal Science highlights that the planet makes an enormously wide orbit and takes around 600 years to orbit around its main sun.