'Vanishing stars' citizen-science project opens the skies to the public

[Admin]

Stars aren't supposed to simply disappear, yet countless bright objects that once appeared in the sky in the 1950s no longer do.

'Vanishing stars' citizen-science project opens the skies to the public : Read more

 

[rod]

"Stars aren't supposed to simply disappear, yet countless bright objects that once appeared in the sky in the 1950s no longer do... So volunteers with the project are examining 150,000 candidate "vanishing stars" that come from a 2020 study(opens in new tab) to see whether objects in the 1950s images can be found in modern images. The project has examined 15,593 candidate image pairs within the data, or approximately 10% of all the candidates, and have identified 798 objects they classify as "vanished." The "vanished" stars might turn out to be anything from a flaring star or a supernova to the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst."

Interesting, I have heard about some stars vanishing using old photos compared to modern images. Everything going according to stellar evolution theory or is something wrong in the firmament?

 

[bernie]

Interesting phenomenom. I have seen this effect to some extent on more visible stars. Variations in infrared sensitivity of CCD detectors can cause variations in image brightness. Older CCD detectors were more sensitive to infrared than modern detectors. Photographic emulsions also show variations in infrared sensitivity. This does not account for everything but it is an effect that needs to be filtered out.