How would a world with two suns work? Is that even possible, or would they both just end up destroying each other and the planet?
I’ve written about about binary stars before, but lets go into it a little deeper.
Your planet’s system will generally come in one of two configurations - a close binary system, or a far binary system. The thing that determines which configuration is simply the distance between the two stars.
In a close binary system, the two stars orbit very close to each other. In extreme cases, the two stars can actually be so close their upper atmospheres might mix together. These are called contact binaries, and they are quite spectacular.
The two stars will appear in the sky of your planet very close to each other, and you would be able to see them orbiting around each other. It’s this configuration that will give you the spectacular double sunset of Tatooine.
The other type of binary system is known as a far binary system. In this case, the two stars are far enough away that each of them can have their own planets without the other sun stealing them away.
In this type of binary system, the two suns will appear in different parts of the sky - sometimes close together, sometimes on opposite sides of the sky. If the companion star is in the night sky, it can provide quite a bit of light.
From our stellar surveys, it seems that about half of all stars like our Sun are in binary or other multi-star systems. For larger stars, maybe as many as 80 percent of them have one or more companion stars. We’re not sure if multi-star systems have a larger or smaller chance of having planets, but it’s a pretty good bet that most planets in our universe are in multi-star systems.
