Anna Luna, age l0, of Farmersville, calif., for her question:

What kind of star is polaris?

The faithful pole star has been guiding travelers over the earth since before the dawn of history. Modern astronomers tell us that it is a binary star, a pair of twins so close together that they appear to us as a single star. One of them is a cepheid variable, a special type of star that helps astronomers figure heavenly distances.

It is easy to find polaris in the sky and easy to use it to figure directions on the earth. North of the equator, where it is seen in the sky, it always hangs in the northerly part of the sky. However, the pole star is about one degree from the true north, a sky distance equal to twice the width of the full moon.