The planet that was discovered by the Hubble Telescope, which is called the OGLE-2007-BLG-349 is 8,000 light-years away from Earth. The planet orbits around its two stars once every seven days with a distance of about 300 million miles.
The Hubble astronomers discovered it nine years ago but they did not notice the second star. But it is never clear if what they are seeing is a planet with two stars or a star with two planets.
The researchers observed that the starlight was too faint to be compared to our sun. The brightness of the stars are compared to dwarf stars. "The model with two stars and one planet is the only one consistent with the Hubble data," said David Bennett from NASA, Inverse reported.
It is the first time that scientists have been able to identify a three-body system using the gravitational microlensing technique. The bodies are too far for the Hubble to capture but it detects where the gravity of a foreground star bent increased the light of an aligned background star.
On the other hand, red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the Milky Way. They emit less light compared to our sun but have longer life span. Astronomers have discovered dozens of planet orbiting red dwarfs in the recent years. Most of these planets are called "super-Earths" as many of them seem to orbit in the "habitable zone" where water exists on the surface according to Daily Mail.
Moreover, there are still debates about whether humans can live on these planets. The stars have low temperature and the planet has to orbit closer for them to be habitable, so close that they become tidally locked. This means that one side of the planet will remains pointing towards the star while the other side will have a never ending night.
Meanwhile, here are some of the best images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope:
