Where does this come from, and can I check it?

Kepler-16b circles a pair of stars that also eclipse each other. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

Is this really a space fact?

Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.

Mondo Knows Facts

Some planets orbit two suns at once

Kepler-16b circles a pair of stars that also eclipse each other Announced in 2011, Kepler-16b lies about 200 light years away and orbits two small stars every 229 days. It is a cold gas giant on the scale of Saturn, so any moon would be a better bet for warmth than the planet itself. The two stars eclipse each other every 41 days, which let astronomers weigh all three bodies. It sits in Mondo's space collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

NASA Science

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Space & Astronomy trivia

More facts like this

The Kepler Space Telescope discovered thousands of exoplanetsMonitoring star brightness dips revealed worlds orbiting distant stars Rogue planets wander the galaxy without a starGravitational scattering can fling worlds into interstellar space on their own TRAPPIST-1 hosts seven Earth-sized rocky planets around an ultracool starThree planets in the system orbit within the habitable liquid water zone A planet crossing its star dims the lightThe size of the dip gives the planet's radius compared with its star's Wobbling starlight reveals unseen planetsA star's tiny back and forth motion shifts its spectral lines Huygens landed on Titan and saw river channelsThe 2005 probe photographed drainage networks cut by liquid methane

Tags: exoplanets, binaries, kepler

Some planets orbit two suns at once: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: Kepler-16b circles a pair of stars that also eclipse each other. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a space fact?: Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.