About half of all known stellar systems with Sun-like stars consist of two or more stars, significantly affecting the orbital stability of any planet in these systems. Here we study the onset of instability for an Earth-type planet that is part of a binary system. Our investigation makes use of previous analyt-ical work allowing to describe the permissible region of planetary motion. This allows us to establish a criterion for the orbital stability of planets that may be useful in the context of future observational and theoretical studies.
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