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Concept
Circumbinary planet
Summary
A circumbinary planet is a planet that orbits two stars instead of one. The two stars orbit each other in a binary system, while the planet typically orbits farther from the center of the system than either of the two stars. In contrast, circumstellar planets in a binary system have stable orbits around one of the two stars, closer in than the orbital distance of the other star. Studies in 2013 showed that there is a strong hint that a circumbinary planet and its stars originate from a single disk.
The first confirmed circumbinary planet was found orbiting the system PSR B1620-26, which contains a millisecond pulsar and a white dwarf and is located in the globular cluster M4. The existence of the third body was first reported in 1993, and was suggested to be a planet based on 5 years of observational data. In 2003 the planet was characterised as being 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter in a low eccentricity orbit with a semimajor axis of 23 AU.
The first circumbinary planet around a main sequence star was found in 2005 in the system HD 202206: a Jupiter-size planet orbiting a system composed of a Sun-like star and a brown dwarf.
HD 202206 is a Sun-like star orbited by two objects, one of 17 MJ and one of 2.4 MJ. The classification of HD 202206 b as a brown dwarf or "superplanet" is now clear. HD 202206 b is actually a red dwarf with 0.089 solar masses. The two objects could have both formed in a protoplanetary disk with the inner one becoming a superplanet, or the outer planet could have formed in a circumbinary disk.
A dynamical analysis of the system further shows a 5:1 mean motion resonance between the planet and the brown dwarf.
These observations raise the question of how this system was formed, but numerical simulations show that a planet formed in a circumbinary disk can migrate inward until it is captured in resonance.
On 15 September 2011, astronomers, using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, announced the first partial-eclipse-based discovery of a circumbinary planet.
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