Very much farther away than the close double star would lie the other two components of this quadruple system. But at greater distances the fire-stream would be so dispersed that it would no longer be dangerous. It is possible that many close double stars may be surrounded by such gaseous envelopes, which would no doubt make any nearer planets rather unhealthy. Linking the two stars is a bridge of incandescent hydrogen, which sprays out from the central sun towards its smaller companion and then forms a vast, expanding spiral-a pin wheel of crimson flame larger than our entire Solar System. They are so close together that their gravitational fields distort them into ellipses, the longer axes pointing towards each other. The two components are very large and, unlike our own Sun, are not spherical. Coming up over the horizon is a double star of the Beta Lyrae type. Let us imagine the sunrise on a planet of a multiple star. ![]() The problem of contriving a calendar for such worlds would be an appalling one, but in compensation the inhabitants would have skies whose splendor we can scarcely imagine. The orbits of such planets would be exceedingly complex, in some cases never repeating themselves again so that the conception of the "year" would have no meaning. We do not know how double suns are formed, but whatever the process one would expect some debris to be left over and to condense into worlds. There seems no reason why such multiple stars should not have planets, and indeed there are cogent arguments why they should. Systems of three, four, five, six, and even more stars also occur, with fantastic and beautiful combinations of color. Sometimes the two stars are of identical types, but sometimes they are so disproportionate in size that an elephant waltzing with a gnat would not be an inaccurate comparison. The variety of these partnerships is immense. Many suns, however, occur in pairs, revolving around each other under their mutual gravitation. Our own Sun is-apart from its planets-a solitary wanderer through space. We have several times referred to "double stars" and perhaps a word of explanation is needed about these. It would be stretching coincidence a little too far to expect a couple of solar systems within eleven light-years of each other if they were rare phenomena. In particular, it refutes the old idea that there can be only one or two planetary systems in the Galaxy-for 61 Cygni is one of our closest neighbors. There is clearly no hope of detecting worlds as small as Earth by the gravitational disturbances they produce, but if we can discover even a few giant planets by this technique it is certainly a very important step forward. It seems too small to be a sun and may therefore be a very large planet. This object has about fifteen times the mass of Jupiter, or five thousand times that of Earth. This pair of faint stars has been carefully studied for over a century, and from the movements of one component the existence of a third body has been deduced. The first to be discovered was in the system of the double star 61 Cygni, about eleven light-years away. In one or two exceptional cases there is some evidence for bodies of planetary size revolving around other stars. Many thanks for the fascinating Minard diagram! Perhaps we're seeing the starship's actual current viewpoint to the system silhouetted in black (with the horizontal black line simply indicating the horizontal plane of the ship and having no significance vis-á-vis the star system), and the white schematic behind it is a rotated and three-dimensionalized projection of that silhouette to show the true layout (which is of greater utility to Kirk in his command decisions)? In that case, the system indeed is in a statistically really exciting super-syzygy arrangement. Are we to understand that the star gave birth to a bunch of planets, and then tilted its own axis so as to disavow the lot?Īnd what does distance-from-left designate in the black diagram? Is is mean orbital radius, as opposed to the radius evident from the above picture (so that some of the planet pairs indeed swap places during their respective years!)? Curiously, none of the planets are shown to have zero inclination - that is, there is no ecpliptic to this system.
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