Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in US have recently made an announcement of the discovery of an exoplanet in a stable orbit around a star, occupying a triple star system. While the planet that has three stars, or should we say, three suns, has been known to researchers since 1973, this new discovery marks the first time it has been proven to have three stars serving as its sun, instead of one.

The planet is codenamed KELT-4Ab, and according to study lead Jason Eastman, the fact that the exo-planet has three suns isn’t the strangest thing about his team’s new discovery. The triple-star system offers a unique opportunity for scientists trying to understand how it is that gas giants, such as KELT-4Ab, manage to orbit so close to their star.

The system has a main bright star known as KELT-4A and a binary pair of stars known as KELT-4B and KELT-4C jointly called KELT-4BC.

KELT-4Ab is a gas giant similar in size to Jupiter and among its three suns, the gigantic KELT-A serves as its primary sun. KELT-4Ab takes approximately three days to make its way around the star KELT-A. The much smaller twin suns KELT-B and KELT-C  are considerably farther away, and orbit each other every 30 years or so.

Space scientists have known of the existence of the KELT system for several years, but it was thought that the binary stars were actually just one star. The researchers on this new effort were able to see that they were actually a binary system courtesy of two robotically controlled telescopes on two different continents-one is in Arizona, the other in South Africa. Together they are known as the Kilo degree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT), which is of course how the KELT system got its name.

KELT-4ab isn’t the only planet with three suns in our universe; for example, the HD 1885Ab star system is very similar to what Eastman and colleagues have discovered. KELT-4ab, however, is only 210 parsecs away, making it the nearest planet with a three-sun system discovered so far.

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