We first meet young Luke Skywalker, hero of the Star Wars movies, on the desert planet Tatooine on the fringe of the Galactic Republic. Luke worked on his Uncle Owen’s “moisture farm” but like any future Jedi knight, he knew he was destined for greater things. At the end of the first scene, Skywalker gazes skyward toward that planet’s two suns, pulled toward a fate he could only guess.
The fictional world Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home world in the Star Wars movie series. Credit: Star Wars/George Lucas
As far as planets go, Tatooine will always be one of my favorites. The exotic dual sunsets, wild expanses of desert and cool architecture of the future left a wonderful impression when I first saw Star Wars back in 1977.
American film producer George Lucas filmed scenes for his fictional planet at various locations across the real deserts of Tunisia. As for the name Tatooine, it was adapted from the Tunisian city Tatahouine, an oasis town in southern part of that country.
Roadside sign in the town of Tatahouine. There are several spellings for the name in common use. Credit: Alain Bachellier
In the film, it’s pronounced “tatoo-een” but the locals call it “tat-ween”. Although Lucas didn’t film any scenes in the city, the landscape there and across the deserts of Tunisia were the inspiration for Luke’s homeland.
A typical fragment of the Tatahouine meteorite – this one weighs 1.2 grams. Notice the green color and black shock veins. Penny shown for scale. Photo: Bob King
Tatooine/Tatahouine boasts yet another outer space connection. 81 years ago to the day on June 27, 1931 at 1:30 a.m. local time, a fireball exploded above the Tunisian desert 2.5 miles northeast of Tatahouine. Soon after the fall, local Bedouins collected hundreds of small meteorite fragments that peppered a hillside.
Vesta’s south pole is face on in this picture taken by Dawn. The dark area at center is a tall mountain peak. Scientists suspect the weird appearance of the polar region is due to an impact with another asteroid. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
What they plucked from the dust was a rare, green-colored meteorite found deep within an asteroid’s crust called a diogenite. Many years later, scientists identified the Tatahouine meteorite’s true home – the asteroid Vesta – by analyzing light reflected from the meteorite and the asteroid. They were a close match.
More recently, the Dawn space probe, which has been keeping an orbital eye on Vesta for months, confirmed that Tatahouine and other diogenite meteorites originated on this little world. A likely scenario for Tatahouine’s delivery to Earth involved a massive impact on the asteroid. Chunks of crustal material were sent flying into space where they drifted for some 38 million years before finding their way to our planet on a tepid June morning in 1931.
Known informally as Tatooine, Kepler 16b orbits a pair of stars in the Milky Way. Credit: NASA
Evidence for the power of the impact can be seen in the web of black shock veins of melted rock created instantaneously upon impact. The large orthopyroxene crystals give Tatahouine a unique green color found in few meteorites.
Since the meteorite shattered into thousands of small pieces, tourists to the area can still find fragments to this day. Tatahouine fragments look “naked” or without the typical black fusion crust coating many other meteorites. It blew to bits at a very low altitude, too late and moving too slowly for air friction to melt the exterior of each small piece.
In 2011 NASA announced it had found the first planet in orbit about a double sun like the fictional Tatooine. Named Kepler 16b, the Saturn-mass planet orbits orange and red stars with a period 229 days. With temperatures ranging from 100 to 150 below F, this gas giant Tatooine sadly couldn’t host Jabba the Hut and the delightful cantina pictured in Star Wars.
Watch the local planets tonight in the southwestern sky at nightfall. Mars and Beta Virginis, also known as Zavijava, will be a tight pair. Created with Stellarium
Before we depart planets alien and otherwise, take a look tonight in the moon’s direction. To its left you’ll see the ever-present pair of Saturn and Spica. Right of the moon is Mars, which will be very close to the 3rd magnitude star Zavijava in the constellation Virgo tonight. Can you split the two apart with you eye? If not, enjoy this temporary “double star” in binoculars.
Bob, is there any evidence that the sun is a binary star? If it were, how would astronomers find out? What would be the telltale signs?
Walter Cruttenden of the Binary Institute, theorises that precession is caused by the sun’s curving orbit round such a binary. Is there any astronomical evidence to suggest that that may be true?
Carol,
Precession has a clear cause – the wobbling of Earth’s axis over a period of ~ 26,000 years. This motion has been measured and the explanation is cut and dry as far as I understand it. Cruttenden proposes that precession is due to the sun and solar system revolving around a second star in a double star system. First: no evidence for a second star. Second: He doesn’t mention that the sun and solar system are moving around the center of the galaxy at 143 miles per second. How does that affect his precession idea?
If the sun had a companion a light year or two away, and if it were a typical red dwarf star or hotter, we would have seen it by now. It’s proximity and motion about a common center of gravity shared with the sun would have betrayed itself. But let’s say it’s an extremely faint red or brown dwarf and invisible or nearly so at visual wavelengths. In that case it would show up clearly – and brightly – in data from the recent WISE infrared mission or one of the other infrared missions of the past. It didn’t. Check out Cruttenden’s credentials – he’s an investment banker who makes appearances along with other fringe folks on Coast to Coast radio, a station notorious for promoting junk science. His binary star concept is one step away from the old and discredited “Nemesis” hypothesis.
There may be another planet or three out there but I’m very doubtful about a stellar companion.