Stars go missing.

[steve_bank]

Could it be a Dyson Sphere?

Visible light goes away but the sphere would be an IR hot spot.

I can't imagine anyone actually building a Dysons sphere.

I know, but you never know.

 

[Gun Nut]

Is the expectation that never ever could a random dark rock wander between your eyes and a particular star? never?
Should we not be totally expecting thousands of stars "disappearing" for a while as transition across our vision at a very shallow angles occur? How empty is space really expected to be?

I read "star disappearing" and immediately thought "rock wandered in front of it for a little while". how is that not the most basic explanation?

 

[Gun Nut]

It seems that we have stars missing in action;

''There’s something odd happening in our skies. Almost 100 stars seem to be missing.

They haven’t gone nova. Nor have they become black holes. With no natural explanation available, some astronomers are seeing aliens.

In 2015, a group of citizen astronomers brought the world’s attention to KIC 8462852, which quickly became known as Tabby’s Star. It was flickering. Erratically. Dramatically.

It’s no longer alone.

Some 21 other stars have been found behaving in the same seemingly unnatural way.

But, in 2016, Swedish astronomers noticed nothing.

It was nothing where something was supposed to be.

A star had vanished.

Without a trace.

Three years later, they’ve discovered at least 100 more are missing.

“Unless a star collapses directly into a black hole, there is no known physical process by which it could physically vanish,” the study reads.

“If such examples exist, this makes it interesting for searches for new exotic phenomena or even signs of technologically advanced civilisations.”

WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?

The Stockholm University and the Institute of Astrophysics of Canarias have been following-up their 2016 nothingness in space.

Back then they were comparing a 1950s photo of the constellation Lupus the Wolf to a more contemporary image. The 1950s image showed a star. The new one did not.

But there was no plume of a supernova. No sign of a collapsing, cooling husk.

This wasn’t supposed to be possible.

But this particular impossible is becoming increasingly common.''

Spoiled like something is passing in front of the star. Is it across the spectrum or just in the visible?

Just heard this on a science segment, there is a star that periodical dims.

It would have to be something large and dark to block out a star for considable period of time. If it was something relatively closer to us than the star you would not expect it to hold position for long, or perhaps block out a larger area of light than a single star, yet there no dark patch in the starfield to suggest dark matter or gas.

I can block out the entire moon with just my thumb. Perspective, my friends... perspective.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I would say more like "undetected"... where we thought they should be.

 

[DBT]

I can block out the entire moon with just my thumb. Perspective, my friends... perspective.

You can hold your thumb over your eye as long as you like, but how long does a dark object stay in line with a star when both objects are moving...

 

[steve_bank]

If the IR is still there it did not disappear. Another one of those media science reports that can be misleading.

Hygen's Principle. Block half of your eye and the image dims but the total image is still perceived. If a large object passed by the image in a telescope dims but the entire image remains. I thought that is how exoplanets are allegedly identified.

 

[DBT]

If the IR is still there it did not disappear. Another one of those media science reports that can be misleading.

Hygen's Principle. Block half of your eye and the image dims but the total image is still perceived. If a large object passed by the image in a telescope dims but the entire image remains. I thought that is how exoplanets are allegedly identified.

If the IR is not missing, there is no real mystery. Not knowing the full story, I assume that the issue would not have been brought up if it was the case that IR was found. Unless someone was just seeking notoriety.

 

[Gun Nut]

I can block out the entire moon with just my thumb. Perspective, my friends... perspective.

You can hold your thumb over your eye as long as you like, but how long does a dark object stay in line with a star when both objects are moving...

It depends on the angle of traversal and amount of travel. If the angle is as narrow as possible (i.e. the rock came from our moon and headed straight at the "now missing" star a million years ago), then the star will not be visible for many 100's of thousands of years while it is in the "sweet spot".

 

[skepticalbip]

I can block out the entire moon with just my thumb. Perspective, my friends... perspective.

You can hold your thumb over your eye as long as you like, but how long does a dark object stay in line with a star when both objects are moving...

It depends on the angle of traversal and amount of travel. If the angle is as narrow as possible (i.e. the rock came from our moon and headed straight at the "now missing" star a million years ago), then the star will not be visible for many 100's of thousands of years while it is in the "sweet spot".

But the article says that there are a hundred "missing stars". Your suggestion would be a real stretch for explaining just one missing star.

The biggest problem I see is lack of information. Journalists that write such articles generally know squat about science. They write the articles, not to convey the science but, to attract eyes (or clicks) so the stress is on writing a provocative or controversial article rather than an informative article.

 

[Gun Nut]

It depends on the angle of traversal and amount of travel. If the angle is as narrow as possible (i.e. the rock came from our moon and headed straight at the "now missing" star a million years ago), then the star will not be visible for many 100's of thousands of years while it is in the "sweet spot".

But the article says that there are a hundred "missing stars". Your suggestion would be a real stretch for explaining just one missing star.

The biggest problem I see is lack of information. Journalists that write such articles generally know squat about science. They write the articles, not to convey the science but, to attract eyes (or clicks) so the stress is on writing a provocative or controversial article rather than an informative article.

Maybe... how long have the stars gone "missing"? If only a day or a month... then I would totally expect this... NOT "missing" a star once in a while (and "hundreds" out of the trillions visible is quite the once in a rare while), I would find that quite odd. In my day to day experience, it is a rare occurrence that all things around me are not occluded by any other thing.
A very big rock, very far away from us, moving very slowly, should be expected to occlude a star or two for a year or so.. or century or so even..

 

[bilby]

It depends on the angle of traversal and amount of travel. If the angle is as narrow as possible (i.e. the rock came from our moon and headed straight at the "now missing" star a million years ago), then the star will not be visible for many 100's of thousands of years while it is in the "sweet spot".

But the article says that there are a hundred "missing stars". Your suggestion would be a real stretch for explaining just one missing star.

The biggest problem I see is lack of information. Journalists that write such articles generally know squat about science. They write the articles, not to convey the science but, to attract eyes (or clicks) so the stress is on writing a provocative or controversial article rather than an informative article.

Maybe... how long have the stars gone "missing"? If only a day or a month... then I would totally expect this... NOT "missing" a star once in a while (and "hundreds" out of the trillions visible is quite the once in a rare while), I would find that quite odd. In my day to day experience, it is a rare occurrence that all things around me are not occluded by any other thing.
A very big rock, very far away from us, moving very slowly, should be expected to occlude a star or two for a year or so.. or century or so even..

There are fewer than 2,500 stars visible to the naked eye at any one time from any given location on Earth with good viewing conditions. There's about 5,000 visible stars if you ignore the fact that the Earth blocks your view of more than half of them at any given time. Of course, that depends on how good your eyesight is; A magnitude 6 star is visible to most people, in good viewing conditions away from light pollution, but some can see dimmer stars - if you set your limit at magnitude 6.8, there's as many as about 9,000 visible stars.

From a suburban location, you would be lucky to be able to see more than a few hundred stars; From a large city, it's quite possible that only a few dozen stars are visible even on the clearest of moonless nights.

Certainly there's a lot fewer than "trillions" of visible stars. There's only about 0.1 trillion stars in our galaxy, most not visible from Earth even with the Hubble Space Telescope; and while Hubble can see a lot of galaxies, it can't resolve individual stars at intergalactic distances.

 

[skepticalbip]

It depends on the angle of traversal and amount of travel. If the angle is as narrow as possible (i.e. the rock came from our moon and headed straight at the "now missing" star a million years ago), then the star will not be visible for many 100's of thousands of years while it is in the "sweet spot".

But the article says that there are a hundred "missing stars". Your suggestion would be a real stretch for explaining just one missing star.

The biggest problem I see is lack of information. Journalists that write such articles generally know squat about science. They write the articles, not to convey the science but, to attract eyes (or clicks) so the stress is on writing a provocative or controversial article rather than an informative article.

Maybe... how long have the stars gone "missing"? If only a day or a month... then I would totally expect this... NOT "missing" a star once in a while (and "hundreds" out of the trillions visible is quite the once in a rare while), I would find that quite odd. In my day to day experience, it is a rare occurrence that all things around me are not occluded by any other thing.
A very big rock, very far away from us, moving very slowly, should be expected to occlude a star or two for a year or so.. or century or so even..

That was a hundred "missing" stars in a full sky map, not all together. But your question does address my problem that the article gave no real information. It gives two data points, a sky map taken in 1950 compared to a sky map taken recently, two maps taken about seventy years apart. No info on movement of the stars against the background stars, no info on if maybe the 1950 map caught the stars' during a flaring phase, no info on much of anything.

There were about a quarter million stars with "irregularities" between these two maps. There has been reasonable speculation to explain most but not yet a consensus on these one hundred.

 

[Gun Nut]

Maybe... how long have the stars gone "missing"? If only a day or a month... then I would totally expect this... NOT "missing" a star once in a while (and "hundreds" out of the trillions visible is quite the once in a rare while), I would find that quite odd. In my day to day experience, it is a rare occurrence that all things around me are not occluded by any other thing.
A very big rock, very far away from us, moving very slowly, should be expected to occlude a star or two for a year or so.. or century or so even..

There are fewer than 2,500 stars visible to the naked eye at any one time from any given location on Earth with good viewing conditions. There's about 5,000 visible stars if you ignore the fact that the Earth blocks your view of more than half of them at any given time. Of course, that depends on how good your eyesight is; A magnitude 6 star is visible to most people, in good viewing conditions away from light pollution, but some can see dimmer stars - if you set your limit at magnitude 6.8, there's as many as about 9,000 visible stars.

From a suburban location, you would be lucky to be able to see more than a few hundred stars; From a large city, it's quite possible that only a few dozen stars are visible even on the clearest of moonless nights.

Certainly there's a lot fewer than "trillions" of visible stars. There's only about 0.1 trillion stars in our galaxy, most not visible from Earth even with the Hubble Space Telescope; and while Hubble can see a lot of galaxies, it can't resolve individual stars at intergalactic distances.

Hubble can't resolve individual stars from other galaxies? Oh. Yea, then much lower number. I strongly doubt scientists are freaking out over what their "naked eyes" are able to resolve or not. I'd be pretty surprised if they declared a star "missing" because they personally didn't rub the sleep out of their eyes that morning.

 

[Gun Nut]

Maybe... how long have the stars gone "missing"? If only a day or a month... then I would totally expect this... NOT "missing" a star once in a while (and "hundreds" out of the trillions visible is quite the once in a rare while), I would find that quite odd. In my day to day experience, it is a rare occurrence that all things around me are not occluded by any other thing.
A very big rock, very far away from us, moving very slowly, should be expected to occlude a star or two for a year or so.. or century or so even..

That was a hundred "missing" stars in a full sky map, not all together. But your question does address my problem that the article gave no real information. It gives two data points, a sky map taken in 1950 compared to a sky map taken recently, two maps taken about seventy years apart. No info on movement of the stars against the background stars, no info on if maybe the 1950 map caught the stars' during a flaring phase, no info on much of anything.

There were about a quarter million stars with "irregularities" between these two maps. There has been reasonable speculation to explain most but not yet a consensus on these one hundred.

I was thinking that if I took a still picture of the traffic in the city at night, I would probably determine from any given still image that approximately half the drivers out there were not using their turn signal. Think about it.

 

[steve_bank]

The 24/7 news media has to fill time.

 

[DBT]

Yet it appears that it was astronomers who brought 'missing stars' to the attention of the media.

 

[DBT]

Maybe... how long have the stars gone "missing"? If only a day or a month... then I would totally expect this... NOT "missing" a star once in a while (and "hundreds" out of the trillions visible is quite the once in a rare while), I would find that quite odd. In my day to day experience, it is a rare occurrence that all things around me are not occluded by any other thing.
A very big rock, very far away from us, moving very slowly, should be expected to occlude a star or two for a year or so.. or century or so even..

That was a hundred "missing" stars in a full sky map, not all together. But your question does address my problem that the article gave no real information. It gives two data points, a sky map taken in 1950 compared to a sky map taken recently, two maps taken about seventy years apart. No info on movement of the stars against the background stars, no info on if maybe the 1950 map caught the stars' during a flaring phase, no info on much of anything.

There were about a quarter million stars with "irregularities" between these two maps. There has been reasonable speculation to explain most but not yet a consensus on these one hundred.

I was thinking that if I took a still picture of the traffic in the city at night, I would probably determine from any given still image that approximately half the drivers out there were not using their turn signal. Think about it.

Wouldn't professional astronomists take such things into consideration?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I find the story intriguing because it seems to show that there are always things throwing astronomers for a loop. Predictions, observations, etc... indicating what was originally thought wasn't spot-on. Helps in the growing process.

I was thinking that if I took a still picture of the traffic in the city at night, I would probably determine from any given still image that approximately half the drivers out there were not using their turn signal. Think about it.

Wouldn't professional astronomists take such things into consideration?

No. Professional scientists always do occasional research on web boards to find answers to problems they can't solve because they just aren't as smart and educated in the field of gut science.

 

[Gun Nut]

I was thinking that if I took a still picture of the traffic in the city at night, I would probably determine from any given still image that approximately half the drivers out there were not using their turn signal. Think about it.

Wouldn't professional astronomists take such things into consideration?

Maybe. I'm not a professional "astronomist". That's why I asked how long any given star was missing. It sounds like we are talking about two data points. Not very professional to draw conclusions based on two data points.

 

[DBT]

I was thinking that if I took a still picture of the traffic in the city at night, I would probably determine from any given still image that approximately half the drivers out there were not using their turn signal. Think about it.

Wouldn't professional astronomists take such things into consideration?

Maybe. I'm not a professional "astronomist". That's why I asked how long any given star was missing. It sounds like we are talking about two data points. Not very professional to draw conclusions based on two data points.

The media story gives us the readers only two data points. Presumably the astronomers have more information to work with. After all, the story says that the original list was in the thousands and that through a process of elimination it was reduced to a hundred missing stars.

Which, presumably, means that they had something more to work on than what we have in a brief story, and that professional astronomists are not complete idiots.