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 60 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. Binary star systems are common throughout the universe, where two stars orbit each other. In some cases, these are different types of stars, such as a neutron star orbiting a main sequence star. The comic depicts a binary system of a real star and a drawn star.

In reality, pointed stars do not actually exist. The points often seen in the night sky around stars are just optical illusions 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. The title text says "big asterisk" to mean a physically very large (astronomical scale) punctuation symbol.

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. The orbits are shown with dashed lines. One star is revolving circularly close to the center of mass and is shown as a filled circle. The other has a very elliptic orbit further out. It is currently close to its furthest point from the other star. This star is 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)

Here After the comments 66.210.7.66 17:22, 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 ~~~~)

They can't all be blockbusters. I suspect he first came up with the "big asterisk" pun in the title text, and worked backwards from that to the main comic. Barmar (talk) 16:54, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

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

Hey, sometimes a good simple pun is all what it takes. The second star should have been rendered with the Cosmic Sans font, though, for more impact amongst the typography fanbase. Ralfoide (talk) 19:24, 5 February 2026 (UTC)
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