Zip! Stellar Pair in Fastest Orbit Ever Seen 15 March 2002: A pair of old mostly dead stars, each about the size of Earth, orbit one another every five minutes -- 100,000 times faster than Earth's yearly orbit around the Sun, astronomers said today. The stars, probably white dwarfs, are separated by just 49,700 miles (80,000 kilometers), a little more than twice the distance from Earth to a typical TV-broadcasting satellite. The system, called RX J0806.3+1527, was first detected in X-rays in 1994, and every 5 minutes it blinked. Only now, based on research led by by GianLuca Israel of the Astronomical Observatory of Rome, is it certain that the blinking is due to one star passing in front of the other. Observations were made with with the ESO's Very Large Telescope and the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo. From Space.com
