A new discovery of a faraway planet, published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, is bringing more science to what was once the realm of science fiction.

The new exoplanet, TOI-1338/BEBOP-1c, is a gas giant 65 times the size of Earth and more than 1,300 light years away in a binary star system — where two suns revolve around each other.

For some, it might recall a powerful scene from the original Star Wars movie — Luke Skywalker staring at the horizon, pining for a greater destiny than on the dustball of Tatooine, as the aptly named John Williams theme Binary Sunset plays in the background.

While the fictional Tatooine was alone, BEBOP-1c is the second planet discovered in the real TOI-1338 system.

“It’s quite an exciting discovery,” said Matthew Standing, post-doctoral researcher at The Open University in Milton Keynes, England, and first author of the study.

“It’s only the second multi-planetary, circumbinary system and the first-ever circumbinary planet discovered with radial velocity.”

Unpacking those terms is key to why experts think this could lay the groundwork for finding similar hidden exoplanets. But it requires understanding the chaos of such cosmic neighbourhoods and the methods used to detect exoplanets.