Artist depiction of PH1, a planet with two parent stars and two more stars orbiting the entire system. Credit: Haven Giguere at Yale.

If one sun wasn’t enough, or for that matter two, this newly found star system appears to have a total of four suns. Systems with two suns appear to be relatively common in the universe.

But this is the first four-star system discovered and it happens to reside within our own galaxy, The Milky Way.

The astronomers have also discovered a planet within this system. named “PH1”, it is located at a distance of 5,000 light years from the Earth, it revolves around two suns, one slightly larger than our own sun, the other slightly smaller.

But orbiting around these two stars there are two more stars revolving. With a total of four stars in one system. All of which must be having a gravitational pull on each other, probably a unique process in system creation and circumstance.

The discovery of PH1 and the two nearest stars were initially made by private planet hunters led by the Yale University but was later confirmed by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. The planet PH1 appears to be approximately the same size as Neptune. Then later closer examination by NASA revealed the system to be made up by a total of four stars.

Planetary systems with two suns have been discovered on six occasions at the time of writing. So it appears to not be uncommon in the universe. But the question is how common four suns are.

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Armchair astronomers find planet in four-star system
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