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An eclipsing binary star is a binary star system in which the orbital plane of the two stars lies so nearly in the line of sight of the observer that the components undergo mutual eclipses. [20] In the case where the binary is also a spectroscopic binary and the parallax of the system is known, the binary is quite valuable for stellar analysis.
The most common kinds of binary system are binary stars and binary asteroids, but brown dwarfs, planets, neutron stars, black holes and galaxies can also form binaries. A multiple system is similar but consists of three or more objects, for example triple stars and triple asteroids (a more common term than 'trinary').
Zeta Reticuli, Latinized from ζ Reticuli, is a wide binary star system in the southern constellation of Reticulum. From the southern hemisphere the pair can be seen with the naked eye as a double star in very dark skies. Based upon parallax measurements, this system is located at a distance of about 39.3 light-years (12 parsecs) from Earth.
The newly-discovered binary star system, which is home to two stars gravitationally bound to one another, was found in a dense stellar cluster orbiting Sagittarius A*, which has an estimated mass ...
A multiple star system consists of two or more stars that appear from Earth to be close to one another in the sky. [dubious – discuss] This may result from the stars actually being physically close and gravitationally bound to each other, in which case it is a physical multiple star, or this closeness may be merely apparent, in which case it is an optical multiple star [a] Physical multiple ...
Sirius is a binary star system consisting of two white stars orbiting each other with a separation of about 20 AU [e] (roughly the distance between the Sun and Uranus) and a period of 50.1 years. The brighter component, termed Sirius A, is a main-sequence star of spectral type early A , with an estimated surface temperature of 9,940 K . [ 14 ]
This model is typical of binary stars. Right: Two bodies with a "slight" difference in mass orbiting a common barycenter. Their sizes and this type of orbit are similar to the Pluto–Charon system (in which the barycenter is external to both bodies), as well as the Earth–Moon system (in which the barycenter is internal to the larger body).
Star formation theory, as well as accounting for the formation of a single star, must also account for the statistics of binary stars and the initial mass function. Most stars do not form in isolation but as part of a group of stars referred as star clusters or stellar associations. [2]