A new paper released this week and accepted by the Astronomical Journal (https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.07783) announced the discovery of TOI-1338, a planet in an eclipsing binary system. An eclipsing binary consists of two stars in orbit around each other, and this new planet orbits both stars. The paper was led by Veselin Kostov and his team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and elsewhere, but they were first tipped off to the presence of this interesting system by reading comments on Planet Hunters Talk. Several citizen scientists appear as authors on the paper – congratulations to everyone involved!
This isn’t the first time Planet Hunters have found a circumbinary system – PH1b, discovered way back in 2014, was found in Kepler data by volunteers, and is still the only planet known in a four-star system.
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