3203: Binary Star

Binary Star

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Title text: The discovery of a fully typographical star system comes with a big asterisk.

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Explanation

This is one of 62 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a TV star. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

While a "main sequence star" is a real celestial object, a five-pointed star is how stars are often drawn. The comic uses a drawn star shape to be a part of a celestial star system.

In reality pointed stars do not actually exist, it is just an optical illusion caused by the diffraction spike effect.

The title text similarly uses the * symbol (an asterisk - meaning little star), which is sometimes called a star, to be another real celestial star. A "big asterisk" is used as a metaphor for a rather large caveat, symbolizing a long footnote.

Transcript

This is one of 43 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Graphical depiction of a binary star system. One star is revolving circularly close to the center of mass and is shown as a dot. The other has a visibly elliptic orbit located further and is currently close to its apastron. It's depicted as a pentagram.]

[Caption below the image:]

Space news: astronomers have found the first known system with a main-sequence star orbited by a five-pointed one.

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Discussion

here before the explanation Qwertyuiopfromdefly (talk) 04:47, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Me too 115.70.50.73

It was me as well :::;) 216.25.182.141 05:34, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Here before the comments 82.13.184.33 09:15, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Randall has been, uh, funnier… I thought I must be missing something, a clever joke or some astronomers insider, but no—that's really all there was to it. Well. 2a02:908:c30:5000:b86c:d747:e182:c327 (talk) 07:54, 5 February 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Nice to see that Randall has graduated from the woes of 1029, and now can draw Morocco-style stars :-) --2001:A62:5F7:FB01:BF80:8165:D7C9:B014 08:24, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

The idea of pointed stars alongside normal ones is probably a reference to the James Web Space Telescope. In its images, very bright stars have diffraction spikes, caused by the segmented hexagonal primary mirrors and the three-strut support of the secondary mirror. However, these form 8 spiked images not 5. The Hubble Space Telescope forms 4 spike images, however the effect was not so noticeable with Hubble. 2A12:F41:145B:1300:C59:505F:B2DB:7572 12:19, 5 February 2026 (UTC) dww-uk
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