Planet with two suns like Luke Skywalker’s home Tatooine spotted in deep space
NASA discovers a distant world which may look very familiar to Star Wars fans
A planet which looks a lot like Luke Skywalker's home has been spotted in a galaxy far, far away from Earth.
NASA spotted a "Tatooine" planet with two suns in its skies in a star system 3,700 light years from Earth.
It could even have two habitable moons, although it's impossible to say whether it's home to Tusken sand raiders or womp rats, like its fictional counterpart.
The new world, Kepler-1647b, is locked into a complex orbit around two stars.
It is one of more than 1,200 planets detected outside the solar system by the US space agency Nasa's Kepler space telescope.
Astronomers found it by studying the tiny dip in light that occurred when the planet moved in front of its parent stars, a process known as transiting.
Just nine similar planets have been discovered since Kepler first became operational, although systems with two stars are relatively common, making up about half of all the systems discovered so far.
All the Tatooine planets that have previously been found are Saturn-sized or smaller and tended to orbit close to their host stars.
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Kepler-1647b takes a massive three years to orbit its star, the longest of any confirmed Skywalker-style planet.
In addition, it lies within its host stars' habitable zone, which means temperatures are mild enough to allow liquid surface water and potentially life.
Although the planet itself is too large to nourish living organisms, it could have moons with the right conditions to nourish organic beings.
Astronomer Dr Nader Haghighipour, from the University of Hawaii, said: "A giant planet similar to those in our solar system may well host undetected large moons that could be habitable."
Kepler-1647b, which lies in the direction of the constellation Cygnus, is believed to be around 4.4 billion years old - roughly the same age as the Earth.