Just about 250 light years from Earth, there's a most unusual and just recently discovered star system. We've found binary systems before – that is, two stars orbiting each other. We know of triple star systems; the Alpha / Proxima Centauri system is one such example. But the new system has five stars, which isn't completely unknown, but is exceedingly rare.

It was discovered by the SuperWASP program, which normally hunts for planets. A pre-print of the paper, just presented to the UK National Astronomy Meeting, is available on Arxiv.

The system involves two sets of binary stars. In one binary pair, the stars orbit around each other close enough to trade off gasses. The other binary has a little bit more room to breathe, with about 1.86 million miles of separation. This is smaller than the 35.97 million miles between the Sun and Mercury, and accounts for about the diameter of the sun plus a little extra padding. But it prevents the two suns from coming into contact.

Then there's the star that's off on its own. It orbits one of the other binary pairs, with all five on the same relative plane. There's roughly a distance of 13 billion miles between them. That's around 140 astronomical units. By comparison, Voyager 1 is now about 132 AU out and has traveled beyond our sun's heliosheath. So that's a pretty big separation.

This also means that, theoretically, a planet could safely exist in the system, as the stars aren't all gravitationally bound to one other. While it's unlikely to orbit the stars individually, planets that orbit both stars in a binary are known to exist.

The system, called 1SWASP J093010.78+533859.5, now joins the ranks of only a handful of other quintuple star systems. Of course, it could always grab a couple more and become a seven-star system.

Source: BBC

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