The star lit up after it went out seven years ago
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Astronomers may have solved the mystery of an unusually bright star. They took pictures of a fading star for seven years, and now it began to shine brighter and brighter.
University of Washington doctoral student Anastasios Tzanidakis and research assistant astronomy professor James Davenport were looking for “strange-behaving stars” when they received data on potential stellar strangeness from the Gaia spacecraft.
The space observatory, launched by the European Space Agency in 2013, set out to create the most accurate 3D map of the Milky Way galaxy to date. The astronomers focused on Gaia17bpp, a star that has gradually increased in brightness over the course of 2.5 years.
The results of their study and analysis of the star, presented Tuesday at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, showed that the star itself had not changed. Instead, the star has a strange companion responsible for what researchers are calling a “seven-year photobomb.”
“We believe this star is part of an exceptionally rare type of binary system, between a large, old star – Gaia17bpp – and a small companion star surrounded by a vast disk of dusty material,” Tzanidakis said in a statement.
“Based on our analysis, these two stars orbit each other for an exceptionally long period of time – as much as 1,000 years. The bright star was obscured by a dusty companion.
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