The Mystery of Zeta Cancri Revealed Each week, discover a new spectacular image obtained at CFHT . Most stars form as binaries or multiple systems.
Galaxies are often found in pairs or in clusters, Planets have satellites.
This week's featured object is also a multiple system, a visual triple system. This means that 3 stars are seen orbiting around each other. This week's object, Zeta Cancri, has been studied extensively for the last 200 years or so and many thousands of measurements are available over this period. From these data sets, it is clear that three bright stars are detected. But the data sets also allow to trace the stellar motions, their orbits around each other as they dance in the sky.