Tatooine World
Scientists looking to convey their discoveries in layman’s terms couldn’t do much better than Kepler-16b. The planet was the first to be discovered orbiting two stars, much like Luke Skywalker’s home world Tatooine in the Star Wars movies. Located about 600 light-years from Earth, the planet was not one that astronomers were sure could exist. Gravitational interactions between binary stars could just as likely destroy planets as make them form. The Saturn-size world orbits its two parents every 229 days and while it may not host living things, any potential moons might.
Kepler has since shown that planets around binary stars are not cosmic oddballs. Kepler-34b and 35b are other planets orbiting two stars and the binary pair Kepler-47 even hosts a multi-planet system.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt