NASA Ames announces discovery of planet orbiting two stars

[LongTomH]

From the nasaames YouTube channel: Discovery of Kepler-16.

This is the announcement an earlier post by Bananas was anticipating: The discovery, by NASA's planet-finding Kepler satellite, of a gas giant planet orbiting a binary star system. Forget Star Wars' Tatooine (for now!) this planet is outside the system's habitable zone, the zone where liquid water could exist.

Interestingly, if this was inside the habitable zone, you could have a habitable moon of the giant planet, much like Pandora from James Cameron's Avatar.

Edited to add: Phil Plait, The Bad Astronomer is having a field day with this: Astronomers discover a wretched hive of scum and villainy. He has considerably more detail on Kepler 16B than the NASA video.