Washington [US], October 6 (ANI): Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered a stellar binary, or pair of stars, with an extremely short orbit, appearing to circle each other every 51 minutes. The system seems to be one of a rare class of binaries known as a "cataclysmic variable," in which a star similar to our sun orbits tightly around a white dwarf -- a hot, dense core of a burned-out star.