A team of astronomers has discovered thata very bright star named Epsilon Aurigaeand located two thousand light years from Earth it seemslose some of its luminosity every 27 years for 18 months due to an “eclipse”. Their study is published today in the journalNature.
The darkening is caused by ageometrically thin cloud, dark, dense, but partially translucent, which is placed every so often in the plane between the star Epsilon Aurigae and Earth, making it look less bright.
“This really shows that the basic paradigm was correct despite the low probability of such an alignment,” explained John Monnier, associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Michigan and a co-author of the study. “I was amazed that we were able to capture these images. There is no other system like this known. And what’s more it seems to be in a rare phase of stellar life. And all this happens so close to us. It is extremely fortuitous.”
This hypothesis, recently raised, has been able to be tested thanks to a technique called interferometry, which combines the light from four telescopes and then amplifies it. As a result, an image is obtained 100 times greater than that obtained directly with the Hubble space telescope.
Before this instrument, stars were seen as mere points of light even with the largest telescopes. “Interferometry has made high-resolution imaging of distant objects a reality,” says Fabien Baron, a PhD researcher in the Department of Astronomy who assisted in processing the images for this study. “This instrument will probably solve many mysteries and will also open up new questions for us.”
