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The Mystery of the Vanishing Star
A decade ago a star mysteriously disappeared from the night sky. We still have no idea why.
At first glance this star seems much like any other, one slightly red dot among a thousand others. Stare a little longer, though, and it starts to look a bit odd. It is moving too fast, so fast in fact, that it should have long ago escaped our galaxy and drifted into the vast void of intergalactic space. But it hasn’t — somehow, in defiance of Newton’s laws, it is still here.
Ten years ago something even odder happened to this star; something that defies explanation. It vanished, abruptly disappearing from the night sky. For months almost no trace of it remained. No supernova, no swirling cloud of debris, no black hole violently erupting into existence. Nothing at all, save for a faint blue light.
Then, half a year later, the star reappeared, as suddenly as it had gone. It was, it seems, completely unmarked by the experience. Ever since, the star has remained, peacefully shining in the night sky. Astronomers have searched in vain for signs that the event has repeated, but almost two decades of data show nothing of the kind.
This odd star was dubbed VVV-WIT-08. VVV for the name of the project that discovered its strange behaviour: the VISTA Variables in the Via…
