Planets Around Binary Stars

it's been quite common for astronomers to complain about the above scene in star wars, where luke skywalker observes the double sunset (of stars tatoo I and tatoo II) on his home planet of tatooine (which, by the way, was named after the city of tatouine in tunisia, where many scenes for the movie were shot). it was previously believed to be impossible (or at least highly unlikely) for planetary systems to form around binary stars because of gravitational instabilities. then, when more extensive searches for extrasolar planets were embarked upon, planets were found around quite a few binary systems, though these binary systems tended to be extremely "wide" (where the separation between the two stars was on the order of thousands of astronomical units). now, astronomers have used the spitzer space telescope to look for debris disks around stars in binary systems, whose presence would suggest that the planet-building material is there, even if planets haven't actually formed. out of a sample of 69 binary systems, 40 percent were found to have these disks, which is higher than the percentage for single star systems. very cool. (and, we might actually get some reliable numbers into the drake equation.) (image "credit": here)

Binary Stars HD 5980 in X-Rays

the european space agency's xxm-newton x-ray observatory has observed the collision of the winds from two binary stars in the smc radiating energy at a rate about a million times that of our sun. each star is emitting the equivalent of one earth mass of material in its wind every month; this material is then accelerated away from the star by the radiation it is simultaneously emitting. the result? the collision zone is emitting - in x-rays alone - 10 times the amount of energy emitted by our sun. the optical image is above, and the x-ray image below (click for animation). (image credits: esa)