Twin “Planemos” Oph 1622 orbit each other, instead of a star
A pair of strange new worlds that blur the boundaries between planets and stars have been discovered beyond our Solar System. A few dozen such objects have been identified in recent years but this is the first set of “twins”.
Dubbed “planemos”, they circle each other rather than orbiting a star.
Their existence challenges current theories about the formation of planets and stars, astronomers report in the journal Science.
“This is a truly remarkable pair of twins - each having only about 1% the mass of our Sun,” said Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto, co-author of the Science paper.
“Its mere existence is a surprise, and its origin and fate a bit of a mystery.”
The pair belongs to what some astronomers believe is a new class of planet-like objects floating through space; so-called planetary mass objects, or “planemos”, which are not bound to stars.
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We are resisting the temptation to call it a ‘double planet’ because this pair probably didn’t form the way that planets in our Solar System did,” said co-researcher Valentin Ivanov of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Santiago, Chile.
The two objects have similar spectra and colours, suggesting that they formed at the same time about a million years ago.
They are separated by about six times the distance between the Sun and Pluto, and can be found in the Ophiuchus star-forming region some 400 light years away. They go under the official name Oph 162225-240515, or Oph 1622 for short.
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Source: bbc.co.uk
Hmmm…interesting story. Twin planet-like objects circle about each other, instead of sun. I would like to see a bigger picture, though. 
Guess what…there is a bigger pix here. 
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