Now here’s something I didn’t know: Polaris, a.k.a. the North Star, is actually three stars, a trinary system consisting of a supergiant much larger than our own sun and two smaller companions. One of these companions can be seen with a small telescope, but the other is in so close to the big one that its presence has only ever been deduced, never directly observed. Until now.

In this photo, the supergiant is the big white blob, naturally, while the companion star is the much smaller bright spot in the seven o’clock position. Not surprisingly, the image was captured by the amazing Hubble Space Telescope, which had to be cranked up to its maximum resolution in order to accomplish the job; details can be found in this press release from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Pretty cool.