An artist's drawing of three suns and a Jupiter-sized planet from the perspective of a hypothetical moon orbiting the planet. The large sun is already halfway over the horizon, while the two other suns are still visible in the sky. (Photo: NASA)

Beijing July 17 (Xinhuanet)-- A newly detected planet far away in the galaxy has not one, but three suns, according to the astronomers.

    The planet orbits the main star of a triple-star system known as HD 188753 in the constellation Cygnus.

    So the planet, a gas giant slightly greater than Jupiter, experiences the unearthly spectacles of multiple sunrises and sunsets. Its main sun, bright yellow, hovers close by.

    The stellar trio and its planet are about 149 light-years from Earth and about as close to each other as our sun is to Saturn, US scientists reported on Thursday in the current edition of the journal Nature.

    Maciej Konacki of the California Institute of Technology, who made the discovery with the Keck telescope in Hawaii, said scientists previously had no evidence that planets could form or survive in the traffic of such gravitationally complex stellar systems, which were thought to be inhospitable to them.

    "The environment in which this planet exists is quite spectacular," said Maciej Konacki from the California Institute of Technology. "With three suns, the sky view must be out of this world ¡ª literally and figuratively."

    The heat coming from a nearby star frustrates the initial stages of giant planet formation ¡ª the gluing together of planetary seeds, called cores. Therefore, the typical hot Jupiter is thought to form farther out ¡ª beyond a theoretical limit called the snow line. Enditem

    (Agencies)