Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2025

20 JULY-AUGUST 2025 ASTRO PUBLISHING A stronomers have found a planet that orbits at an angle of 90 degrees around a rare pair of peculiar stars. This is the first time we have strong evidence for one of these ‘polar planets’ orbiting a stellar pair. The surprise discov- ery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Several planets orbiting two stars at once, like the fictional Star Wars by ESO Bárbara Ferreira A planet in perpendicular orbit around pair of stars T his image, taken in visible light, shows 2M1510 AB, a pair of brown dwarfs orbiting each other. The two brown dwarfs, A and B, are seen as a single source in this image, but we know there are two of them because they periodically eclipse each other. When monitoring their orbits, astronomers found perturbations that can only be explained by the gravita- tional tug of an exoplanet circling both brown dwarfs in a perpendicular orbit. This system contains a third brown dwarf, 2M1510 C, which is lo- cated too far away to be responsible for these perturbations. [DESI Legacy Survey/D. Lang (Perimeter Institute)]