We have one sun. Scientists just found a system with SIX STARS - three pairs, w/ each star in *perfect* eclipse with its partner.

Anyone there “could see two suns like Luke Skywalker on Tatooine” as four more bright stars dance above.

Me for @NYTScience https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/science/six-stars-eclipses.html

Okay, this is too cool not for a thread.

@HamillHimself, I’m afraid your Homestead’s view has been outdone by a star system a mere 1,900 light-years away. 1/x

NASA’s MIT-led space telescope TESS - that’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite - is designed to find planets outside our solar system. It does this by looking for dips in starlight caused by worlds moving in front of their host stars, as seen from our point of view. 2/x

But, @patyccruz2 tells me, that same light-blocking principle was used to see stars getting in the way of other stars. And as it turns out, binary stars - two stars orbiting one center of mass, but spinning about the galaxy as one single system - are pretty darn common. 3/x

A few six-star systems have been found before, but so far they seem hard to find, perhaps because they’re especially rare.

But TESS has gathered so much starlight from across the night sky that humans alone couldn’t peruse all of it. 4/x

So Brian Powell at @NASAGoddard had an idea. With the help of an astrophysicist, this data scientist invented a bespoke neural net (a sort of AI) that could look through tens of millions of TESS-identified starlight fluctuations in order to find strange star systems. 5/x

It found hundreds of thousands. Binaries, triplets, quadruples...

And in March 2020, it found a six-star system, 1,900 light-years away in the southern sky constellation of Eridanus. It was made of three pairs of binary stars, itself a rarity in the cosmos. 6/x

But what made this system a novelty was that, in all three binaries, the stars moved in front of and behind each other, eclipsing their dance partners from Earth’s line of sight.

The odds of the system existing in this beautiful configuration are extremely low. 7/x

“Just the fact that it exists blows my mind,” said Mr. Powell. “I’d love to just be in a spaceship, park next to this thing and see it in person.” 8/x

The characteristics of this system were confirmed later that year thanks to an international team of professional and amateur astronomers who gave up their time in the name of nothing more than curiosity.

“Science doesn’t stop at the borders,” a co-author told me. 9/x

Exoplanets within the star cluster have not yet been confirmed, but if you lived on a world within, the night sky would be something special, another co-author told me. 10/x

Two of the system’s binaries orbit extremely close to one another, forming their own quadruple subsystem. Any planets there would likely be ejected or engulfed by one of the four stars. Boo. 11/x

The third binary is farther out, orbiting the other two once every 2,000 years or so, making it a possible exoplanetary haven.

Anyone on a planet there would see two suns and four very bright stars. A bit like Tatooine’s sky perhaps, but better. 12/x

To me, the best part of the tale was the fact that a year ago, Mr. Powell was essentially new to lots of astronomy. He had never heard of a lightcurve, and was just “exceptionally curious.”

A year later, and he’s helmed an extraordinary discovery in astronomy. 13/x

The lesson, then, is obvious: with a supportive team and unadulterated enthusiasm for science, you can find pure sci-fi nectar in reality, and change the way we all see the stars.

End.