On the largest of cosmic scales, the best description we have of our Universe is known as the ΛCDM model with an inflationary hot Big Bang: our consensus cosmology. It tells us that we have a…
This photo shows the bright, naked-eye star, Albireo. To the naked eye, it appears as just a single point of light. However, a binocular or telescope view shows that it's actually two very different colored stars separated by a substantial fraction of a light year: a wide binary system. Even thousands of years after its identification, we still don't know if this is a bound system, or two stars that happen to be passing one another in close proximity. (Credit: Jared…