Something Massive Orbits A Stellar Giant At The Center Of The Milky Way
Astronomers are confused by a giant star called VVV-WIT-08 that is roughly 25,000 light-years away from us. During 2021 it dimmed in a completely insane way practically vanishing from the sky for a few months only to come back again leaving us with a giant mystery.
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The collection of mysterious stars recently got a new piece with the dimming giant VVV-WIT-08 that can be found near the center of the Milky Way about 25,000 light-years away from us. Interestingly, the three middle letters in the name mean “What Is This” so we can be sure this thing is something truly interesting.
And it is more than interesting. Leigh Smith from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge and his colleagues observed this strange star and they discovered that this star dims so unbelievably that it almost vanishes from the sky only to come back a few months later. While we do observe similar things in variable stars and stars that get behind something it is wholly exceptional that the time for which the star dims lasts for months.
Smith and his coworkers are convinced that this discovery could lead to a completely new class of stellar objects that would like to call blinking giants. These stars an object – so far we don’t know what kind of an object – orbits a stellar giant (a star about a hundred times larger than the Sun). The object that orbits is surrounded by a gigantic ring of matter that blocks visible radiation. Maybe it could be another star or planet though the question of where the ring comes from is unsolved.
The VVV-WIT-08 giant comes from an area of the Milky Way that has stars at every corner compared to where our own Solar System exists. First, the astronomers thought some other dark objects were causing it to vanish from our sights. But simulations show that based on the facts we know about VVV-WIT-08 this is practically impossible.
If we’d talk about the new class of stars – blinking giants – we seem to know of another star that fits it in for a long time. It’s Almaaz or Epsilon Aurigae – a star that is visible to the naked eye. This too is a giant star of an unknown type with a mysterious massive object orbiting it and every 27 years Almaaz dims to 50 % of its usual brightness. Another possible candidate could be the recently discovered system TYC 2505-672-1 that is the current holder for the system with the longest period for which it is being obscured – 69 years.
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