Astronomers have found a fresh way to look for planets, and it starts by searching for binary stars ⁘ stars that come in pairs and keep their orbits tidily aligned.
A new study shows that, when two sibling suns wheel around each other edge‑on from Earth's viewpoint, they may indicate the presence of planets that are far easier to spot than usual.
"This could be an unprecedented avenue for examining how deterministic, or orderly, the process of planet formation is," said Malena Rice of Yale University who led the work, which lays out a practical map for planet hunters.
Most Sun‑like stars live with at least one stellar companion, forming what astronomers call binary stars.
When that duo circles in a flat plane that happens to face us, telescopes see the stars move directly toward and away from Earth. This presents an edge‑on orientation that magnifies every wobble caused by orbiting planets.
Earlier surveys of Kepler and TESS data found that planets in binaries that are less than about 74 billion miles, or 800 astronomical units, often share the same plane as the twin suns, suggesting a natural alignment during birth.
That discovery hinted that the companion star might act like a gyroscope, steadying the protoplanetary disk and locking everything into one orderly sheet, instead of a random tilt.
Rice's team mined the Gaia DR3 catalog, filtering 20 million entries down to nearly 600 bright, nearby binaries whose motion angles scream "edge‑on."
Because the European Space Agency ( ESA ) satellite records minute changes in position and proper motion, its data let the group calculate the orbital tilt of each pair with degree‑level precision.
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