The winter sky presents us with an embarrassment of riches, but all too often we reflexibly fall back upon the same old warhorses - the Great Nebula in Orion, the Pleiades, the Crab Nebula, or the open clusters of Auriga, etc. But there is more to the sky than what can be found in the Messier Catalog - a lot more. Now most HAL members know that I am a sucker for all double stars, but the ones I enjoy the most are those with a lot of color, especially contrasting color. One of the best is visible right now in the late twilight/early evening sky in Gemini, the magnitude 4.71 star 38 Geminorum. It's an easy star hop to the left of Xi Geminorum, one end of the foot of Pollux (one of the twins, for which the constellation is named). The star is easily found just by scanning the sky about one-third the distance between Gamma Geminorum (the other end of that same foot) and Procyon off over in Canis Minor.
38 Geminorum is located near the center-bottom of this chart.
The first time I laid eyes on this star, I had a difficult time deciding exactly what the colors of its two components were. I felt fairly confident in calling the primary (brighter) component yellow, but the hue of its dimmer companion quite eluded me (it still does!). It almost seemed to change before my eyes from gray to green to dusky red! And it appears I am not alone in this. Just look at some of the descriptions you can find on the web from various observers:
"38 Geminorum is a nice yellow and pale blue pair that may be comfortably split in small telescopes."
"To my eye this star seemed to be a yellow white color with a pale yellow orange companion."
"At 70x I could notice the color contrast of pale yellow and lavender grey"
"Primary is bright white, secondary to faint to tell."
"Primary is a greenish-yellow while secondary is a deeper gold."
"The color of the brighter seemed to be pale white yellow with an orange companion."
"Primary color: White-yellowish - Secondary color: Blue"
What colors do you see?
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