A new planet has been discovered that has four suns in its sky. It directly orbits two of the stars, which are in turn orbited by two distant stars. The circumbinary star is the first of its kind to be discovered, and was originally spotted not by professional researchers but by citizen scientists from the website Planethunters.org.

A Yale-led international team of researchers confirmed its discovery of the planet and then characterized it as a circumbinary planet in a four-star system.

So far, out of all the planets discovered, only six of them are known to orbit double stars, and until now none of them were orbited by other stars.

“Circumbinary planets are the extremes of planet formation,” said lead author Meg Schwamb of Yale.

Read the rest of this entry →