Science: North Star & Co.

The North Star, which has guided navigators throughout history, is not a lonely star like the sun. It has long been known to have a rather dim and distant "companion" visible in telescopes, and the two stars revolve around each other once in thousands of years. Now Dr. Elizabeth Roemer of the University of California has found evidence that Polaris has a second, nearby companion that cannot be seen even with the biggest telescopes.

In 1929 Dr. J. H. Moore of Lick Observatory noticed that the spectrum of Polaris, which is a brilliant supergiant, showed irregularities suggesting that it is revolving around still another star. Under such conditions the light of the circling star changes slightly, according to whether it is moving toward or away from the earth.

Polaris would not hurry for Dr. Moore; so the confirmation of his theory had to wait. Dr. Roemer, by carefully comparing a long series of spectrograms, proved that Polaris is circling once in 30½ years around a dim and probably close companion whose faint light is wholly blotted out by the glare of the supergiant.