io9 
Nov 26, 2008 3:40 PM
1,220
When stars team up, they can do a lot more damage. Scientists had been wondering how one particularly bright star had managed to erode so much gas in the Carina Nebula, until they rumbled the secret of Tr16-244: it's actually three stars, working together.
Two stars orbit so closely together that they appear to be a single point of light, while a third star, their accomplice, keeps its distance, in an orbit that takes hundreds or even thousands of years to complete. It takes crackerjack detective work to uncover binary or multiple stars.
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