The universe just got a lot more Star Wars than we ever expected. Remember that iconic scene where Luke Skywalker stares at the twin sunset on Tatooine?

Science fiction has become reality with the groundbreaking April 2025 discovery of 2M1510 (AB) b – the first-ever confirmed polar circumbinary planet. While previous “Tatooine planets” have been discovered orbiting around two stars, this one takes the concept to an entirely new dimension.

Unlike the fictional desert world from Star Wars, which orbits its binary stars in a flat plane much like Earth orbits our sun, 2M1510 (AB) b travels in a mind-bending polar orbit. This means it loops over and under its two host stars at a nearly 90-degree angle to their orbital plane – something astronomers had theorized but never actually observed until now.

The planet was discovered through the SPECULOOS project, which wasn’t even looking for planets initially. The team was studying a fascinating pair of brown dwarfs – objects too large to be planets but too small to be proper stars – when they noticed something odd. The brown dwarfs, named 2M1510 A and B, weren’t behaving as expected. Their orbital paths showed subtle irregularities that could only be explained by the gravitational influence of an unseen third body.