This video shows an interacting binary star system known as a cataclysmic variable (CV) or cataclysmic binary. The larger star is a red dwarf, a normal and very common star somewhat smaller, cooler and fainter than the Sun. It is in orbit around a mu...

A cataclysmic binary is a close-binary star system consisting of red dwarf (bottom) in orbit around a white dwarf. The proximity of the latter and its powerful gravity distorts the red dwarf. It gas flows away from it and plunges towards and around t...

This is the same kind of binary star system (a cataclysmic variable) as depicted Cataclysm III and VI this time seen from a cave on a purely hypothetical, watery and rocky planet. Admittedly, though, such a situation is highly unlikely to exist in re...

Cygnus X-1 is a very famous x-ray binary star system. It consists of a giant blue star (top) in orbit around what in all likelihood is a – wait for it – black hole. The black hole steals gas from its giant companion and that gas flows towards the...

This image shows a low-mass x-ray binary star seen from a nearby, hypothetical asteroid field. The system consists of a red dwarf (bottom) which is losing its atmosphere to a black hole via an accretion disc....

Kepler-35 is a binary star system, around which astronomers have found a so-called transiting circumbinary exoplanet, Kepler-35b. That is, a planet which orbits both stars as if they were one. This image imagines the view from the surface of a moon o...

Algol, also known as Beta Persei in the constellation Perseus, is the prototype of a class of interacting binary stars which differ from cataclysmic binaries. It was the first eclipsing binary ever found. Viewed from Earth, Algol varies its brightnes...

Here is a different kind of x-ray binary. In the foreground (top) is a hot star called a Be star. It spins so quickly that it is surrounded by a circumstellar disc of matter, flung off via centrifugal force. The Be star is in orbit around a tiny and ...

In this image I imagine an Earth-like world in orbit around not a single star but a close binary. What beautiful sunsets could be witnessed from this world. In the sky I have added a giant satellite, its night side illuminated by cities, betraying in...

Here you have an impression of a high-mass x-ray binary (HMXB), in which a blue giant (right) orbits a compact object such as a neutron star or black hole. The blue giant has a powerful stellar wind, shown radiating outwards here. Some of this materi...