What does the star Castor look like in the constellation Gemini, consisting immediately of 6 stars

As you know, in the solar system there is only one star - the sun. But this is not the limit: in our Galaxy and beyond, you can observe stellar systems, which include two bodies at once. This is not so rare: according to astrophysicists, about 50% of all the stars of the Milky Way have such a structure. Stars in such a pair can be comparable in magnitude, or one of them can be significantly larger than the other. For us, warmed by the light of only one star, it looks, of course, very exotic. If our Sun had a partner comparable in size to it, then we would observe sunrises and sunsets twice a day and receive twice as much heat and light, and the sky above our heads would look completely different. But what if we had three Suns or four at once? It turns out that this happens in the Universe! Moreover, there are very rare stars consisting of five or six stars at once, which, as a rule, have different sizes. One of them is the star Castor in the constellation Gemini.

This constellation can easily be found in the night sky by those who live in the Northern Hemisphere. The constituent stars are best seen in the winter-spring period, and the constellation Gemini itself was known to scientists of Antiquity. But, of course, in those days, astronomers could not even imagine that they were observing not just a star, but immediately 6 stars forming a complex system. The fact that this star is not quite ordinary was noticed by astronomers of the Middle Ages, and the rest of the details were found out by modern scientists, thanks to the presence of powerful telescopes and complex instruments. It turned out that the Castor system consists immediately of three stellar pairs that have a common center of mass. Earthlings daily watching how only one star rises and goes beyond the horizon, it is difficult to even imagine such a thing. Castor is, without a doubt, an outstanding star system in many respects, looking at which you understand how simple our Sun is.

But the stellar pairs that make up Castor are significantly different from each other. The largest star in this system is Aa, which is a white star. Around her is a red dwarf called Ab. The second pair, by the type of stars, is similar to the first, with the only difference being that the Ba star is somewhat inferior to the leader in size. The third pair is two red dwarfs. This double star is significantly inferior in mass to the main double stars and rotates around them in an elliptical orbit, and this looks very unusual.

More detailed studies of the Castor system have revealed yet another interesting feature. At least 16 more stars are associated with these 6 stars, which together form a very complex system called the Castor group of stars. Despite the fact that a number of scientists question the possibility of separating such an extensive group of stars into one system, they are all unanimous that the Castor system is the most amazing among all that have been discovered so far.