The Astronomy of Relationships

It is not often that astronomy offers salient analogies for relationships, probably half as often for anyone to even notice, but, in reading about solar systems in our galaxy and beyond, I found a few: More than four-fifths of the single points of light we observe in the night sky are actually two or more stars orbiting together. The most common of the multiple star systems are binary stars, systems of two companion stars. Some people even think that our sun is part of a binary system, with an as yet to be observed companion. There are 'wide binaries', consisting of two stars whose orbits are spread apart from one another, leaving them to evolve separately; 'close binaries', consisting of two stars that orbit one another so closely that one might actually transfer mass to the other or be pulled into the other completely; and everything in between, including categorizations that have more to do with how we perceive these stars: 'visual binaries', which can be distinguished visually through a telescope; 'spectroscopic binaries', which can only be distinguished by the wavelengths of the light that each one emits; 'eclipsing binaries', whose angle with the earth and our line of sight, so to speak, makes it so that we see these stars in alternating eclipses; 'astrometric binaries', where a visible star appears to be dancing around empty space, when, in reality, it is dancing with an unobservable companion; and 'double stars', which are two stars that appear to be binary stars, based on our angle of observation, but, in reality, are nowhere near one another. I think that we can all attest to either living through or observing relationships that align with these categorizations, and, perhaps, some of us are clear about how we want our heart to orbit another heart. The beautiful break from these analogies is that we create our own gravity. You can pull the heart you love straight to yours, if you choose to, or you can tether it at a distance and risk it being pulled away by other gravitational fields. My take, pull with everything you have, and don't be afraid to spin so closely as to become one, bright, shiny star.