This star in the center of the Milky Way “fades on and off” every 200 days.

VVV-WIT-08 is a giant star in the center of the Milky Way, the brightness of which reaches us from it decreases completely almost every 200 days. It explodes every 200 days, a constant flicker that astronomers only have hypotheses but not a strong claim that this could happen.

The star is 25,000 light-years away from us now. Discovered in 2012, it’s starting to attract the attention of astronomers for a peculiarity of its own: it flickers. There is nothing wrong. And that is that the star decreases and increases its brightness over a period that lasts several months. From glossiness to 100% decreases to less than 3% Then it regains its luster again.

In fact, it’s not that the star is losing its luster, it is that Something is coming between her and us to cause a kind of eclipse. There must be something especially big, because the star is about 100 times larger than the sun. What exactly is the biggest dilemma for researchers.

mystery theme

New investigation publicada en el Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Recently he is trying to shed some light on this issue. The fact is that it is not uncommon for stars to lose part of their brightness, usually due to nearby stars or the natural pulsation of some of them. He. She Uncommon here is the long period of time.

Other cases have occurred, with the stars partially dimming every few decades. Astronomers attribute this to massive dust discs as the most likely cause. However, it can also be two binary stars that rotate and outplay each other.

Due to the remoteness of VVV-WIT-08 and the difficulties in analyzing it from afar, Only approximations and hypotheses can be made at the moment. Mathematical models suggest that an elliptical object millions of kilometers deep is opaque enough to block the light from the star.

Another big difficulty researchers face is not knowing the orbit of the object it covers. Therefore, they cannot calculate the total volume and estimates for it With a margin of error of hundreds of millions of kilometers, almost nothing.

via | Science alert
More information | Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society