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Visual comparison of the sizes of Earth and the Moon (above right) and Pluto–Charon (below right). In astronomy, a double planet (also binary planet) is a binary satellite system where both objects are planets, or planetary-mass objects, and whose joint barycenter is external to both planetary bodies.
The dwarf planet Pluto and its moon Charon are often described as a binary system in the Solar System, which orbit the Sun Main article: Binary asteroid When binary minor planets are similar in size, they may be called " binary companions " instead of referring to the smaller body as a satellite. [ 3 ]
In contrast, circumstellar planets in a binary system have stable orbits around one of the two stars, [1] closer in than the orbital distance of the other star (see Habitability of binary star systems). Studies in 2013 showed that there is a strong hint that a circumbinary planet and its stars originate from a single disk.
Planets that orbit just one star in a binary pair are said to have "S-type" orbits, whereas those that orbit around both stars have "P-type" or "circumbinary" orbits. It is estimated that 50–60% of binary stars are capable of supporting habitable terrestrial planets within stable orbital ranges.
TOI-1338 is a binary star system located in the constellation Pictor, about 1,320 light-years from Earth. It is orbited by two known circumbinary planets, TOI-1338 b, discovered by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) [2] and BEBOP-1c, discovered by the Binaries Escorted By Orbiting Planets project. [6]
An eclipsing binary star is a binary star system in which the orbital plane of the two stars lies so nearly in the line of sight of the observer that the components undergo mutual eclipses. [20] In the case where the binary is also a spectroscopic binary and the parallax of the system is known, the binary is quite valuable for stellar analysis.
Kepler-47 is the first circumbinary multi-planet system discovered by the Kepler mission. [5] The outermost of the planets is a gas giant orbiting within the habitable zone of the stars. [6] Because most stars are binary, the discovery that multi-planet systems can form in such a system has impacted previous theories of planetary formation. [7] [5]
The stars with the most confirmed planets are the Sun (the Solar System's star) and Kepler-90, with 8 confirmed planets each, followed by TRAPPIST-1 with 7 planets. The 1,033 multiplanetary systems are listed below according to the star's distance from Earth. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System, has three planets (b, c and d).