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Revision as of 04:27, 19 December 2013
Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 2 xkcd comics,
and only 62
(2%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
Latest comic
| Binary Star |
 Title text: The discovery of a fully typographical star system comes with a big asterisk. |
Explanation
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
- [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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