For the crew of the ship Enterprise , the television series that bears their name, the contemplation of a sunrise with several suns is common on many of the planets they visit. But the fiction has come true. A few months ago, Dr. Maciej Konacki, from the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena (USA), reported in the journal Nature the discovery of a planet where three consecutive sunsets occur.
Christened HD 188753Ab , the new planet belongs to a common class of extrasolar planets called hot Jupiter, as they are gas giants that rotate close to their main star. HD 188753Ab , which was discovered thanks to the Keck I telescope located on the top of the Hawaiian Mount Mauna Kea, orbits every 3.3 days around a star that is circled every 25.7 days by a couple more that rotate around each other 156 times daily . Without a doubt, the sunsets in the new world have to be spectacular. The downside: to see them you have to travel 149 light years!
