A planet orbiting two stars has been found for the first time. NASA's Kepler observatory, which searches for planets by examining the periodic dimming of the of a star's magnitude discovered the planet, named Kepler-16b. It's situated 200 light years from Earth.
Theory suggested that such circumbinary planet systems existed but this is the first time that one has been observed and verified. So it's a double discovery, firstly the binary star system was found using the primary and secondary eclipses of the two stars and then the variance in the eclipse times verified a planetary body was in a "wide circumbinary orbit".
From NASA: "Most of what we know about the sizes of stars comes from such eclipsing binary systems, and most of what we know about the size of planets comes from transits," said Doyle, who also is the lead author and a Kepler participating scientist. "Kepler-16 combines the best of both worlds, with stellar eclipses and planetary transits in one system."
Though the planet orbits at about the same distance as Venus does in our Solar System is it outside in the habitable zone in Kepler-16 as the stars are much cooler than our own. The planet is thought to be a cold "gas giant" like our own Saturn.
More details on NASA's website here
and the Beeb website here
