The discovery of BEBOP-1c, the second exoplanet (a planet outside the Solar System) to orbit the BEBOP-1 star duo, involved astrophysicists from the University of Coimbra (UC) and the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA), it was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

It is a new planetary system similar to the fictional planet Tatooine, from the "Star Wars" saga. In the film, Tatooine is a world orbiting two twin stars in the Outer Rim galaxy.

According to João Faria, an IA researcher quoted in a joint statement by the UC and the IA, the detection of BEBOP-1c will allow "to study the conditions in which these planets form, which are different from those that existed during the formation of the Solar System".

The exoplanet has a mass about four times greater than that of Neptune (one of the gas giants and the last planet in the Solar System) and orbits the two stars in 215 days (seven months), having been discovered by the international team from observations with telescopes at the European Southern Observatory, installed in Chile, and data from two spectrographs (instruments that record the light spectrum).

The first planet, BEBOP-1b, detected in 2020 thanks to the US space telescope TESS, is almost the diameter of Saturn and orbits the same two stars in 95 days (three months).

In a statement, the British University of Birmingham, which led the work, points out that twelve circumbinary systems are known to date (which contain planets that orbit two stars in the center instead of one, as in the Solar System).

However, the BEBOP-1 system is the second to host more than one planet.

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