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STAR OF THE MONTH
BBC Sky at Night Magazine
|August 2025
SS Cygni, a star that's timed to shine
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SS Cygni is a variable star in the northeast corner of Cygnus, the Swan. This is a cataclysmic variable consisting of two stars in close orbit around one another. One is a red dwarf, the other a white dwarf. When we say close, this isn't an exaggeration: they're just 160,000km or less apart.
This story is from the August 2025 edition of BBC Sky at Night Magazine.
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