Move Over, Tatooine - Scientists Find Rare Star System With Three Suns

In Star Wars, the planet Tatooine has two suns - but scientists have found a real star system which trumps that, with a planet circled by three suns.

The incredibly rare star system was found by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

The planet - known as KELT-4Ab - orbits one star in the system, and that star is orbited by two others, which would shine as brightly as the full moon from the surface of KELT-4Ab.

The closer single star - KELT-A - would appear 40 times as large as the sun appears from Earth, as the hot planet orbits it very closely, taking only three days to circle it.

‘Those two stars would orbit each other every about 30 years, and every 4,000 years they’d make one orbit around KELT-4A,’ says Jason Eastman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

It’s only the fourth known star system with three stars - and the closest to Earth, at 680 light years away.