Amateur astronomers discover a planet with four suns

Re:Amateur astronomers discover a planet with four suns by SoftwareMaven on Monday October 15, 2012 @08:15PM (#4657781)

But there are two of them, so that would mean closer to the moon's brightness, right? If I'm following, the sun would be about 40% as bright ast he full moon at 1000AU, so with the second start being smaller than, it may be 60%?

(Mock my math if need be, I'm not really trying here. :)

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Re:Amateur astronomers discover a planet with four suns by pdonis on Monday October 15, 2012 @11:38PM (#4658357)

Yes, the second star would add to the brightness and make things closer. Also, I didn't see in the article what the actual brightnesses of the two stars 1,000 AU away are relative to the brightness of the Sun. I just used the Sun because it was easy to look up the relative brightness of the Sun vs. the Moon. :-)

Edit: I see from looking at more recent posts that the two distant stars are thought to be spectral class G and M. The Sun is a G, so it should be about the same brightness as the brighter of the two.

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