Looking at Gemini from Earth with the naked eye, one might conclude that Alpha Geminorum, aka Castor is one very bright star. However, astronomers have known since the 17th century that Castor is at least a binary system, meaning two stars gravitationally bound to each other. A little later, it was discovered that each of the two stars of Castor were themselves binary systems, making the whole thing at least a quadruple system. Today we now recognize a faint third binary system that is also gravitationally bound with the quadruple system. So, in all, we can call Castor a sextuple system.
Using my favorite 3D astronomy program Celestia with an add-on created by "Chuft-Captain" from the Celestia Motherlode, I've recorded how the system looks when sped up to 10 billion times the normal rate.
This is cool. Nice post Carter. I will have to try out this program.
ReplyDeleteI see you were able to record if after all:) me like:)
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