It’s Tatooine! NASA finds planet orbiting two stars

Why was John Knoll at a NASA press conference? Because the space agency has discovered a real-life Tatooine: A planet that orbits two stars at once. The New York Times writes:

The official name of the new planet is Kepler 16b, but astronomers are already referring to it informally as Tatooine, after the home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas “Star Wars” movies, which also had two suns. Indeed, a representative from Mr. Lucas’s production company, Lucasfilm, expected to participate in a news conference at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory in California, Kepler’s home office.

So, not a moon. Or a space station. I’m so relieved.

I hope it’s just a (forest) moon: ILM rep to be at NASA press conference Thursday

ILM visual effects supervisor John Knoll will be at a NASA press conference on Thursday. The presser is regarding a discovery made by the Kepler misson.

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the “habitable zone,” the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of the orbiting planet.

What could it be?