Around 10pm last night the sky cleared sufficiently to photograph the Moon nuzzling up to Pollux, one of the two bright stars in the constellation Gemini. In Greek mythology, Castor and Pollux were twins that accompanied Jason on his expedition to steal the Golden Fleece.
It has been suggested that either Pollux (a reddish giant star) or Castor (a bluish component of a complex binary system) has changed in luminosity since ancient times, since Pollux is noticeably brighter than its 'twin'. Of possible interest to non-astronomers is the fact that Pollux is the brightest star known to have a planetary system: it is orbited by a large planet called Thestias which is three times as massive as Jupiter!
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