Two or more stars bound together and catalogued as a single system, from binary and eclipsing binary pairs through triple, quadruple and sextuple systems to optical doubles. Belongs here: any entry whose defining identity is the system of stars together, not one component star. Does not belong here: a single star described on its own, grouped under Stars, or a cluster of many unrelated stars sharing a common origin, grouped under Star Clusters.
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1. Wikipedia: Binary star
Wikimedia FoundationBinary star, Discovery section, 1803 Herschel sentenceQuote, Binary star, Discovery section, 1803 Herschel sentence
By 1803, he had observed changes in the relative positions in a number of double stars over the course of 25 years, and concluded that, instead of showing parallax changes, they seemed to be orbiting each other in binary systems.
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