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Article: Science: All the best stars have a double
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- January 31, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1994 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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There is more to some stars than meets the eye. Take Gemini's
Castor, high in the south on February evenings. At first glance, it
looks almost identical to its "twin star" Pollux - only fainter and
bluer.
But take a small telescope to Castor, and you find two stars
instead of one. The pair are a double star, or "binary", each in
orbit about the other. They take 420 years to complete one circuit.
When examined, each star of the pair turns out to be double. And
there is another, fainter star in the system that is also a binary.
What appeared to be one star is actually six.
Castor is not unusual. In fact, our Sun is a relative rarity in
being single - more than half of all stars are double. ...