Astronomers find something mysterious in space all the time. That is because much of it isn't understood yet. Each discovery brings with it new questions that science hopes to answer. Astronomers find a star that mysteriously dims and hopes to know more about it.
A young star has been seen having episodes of dimming. The star is RIK-210 and it is around 472 light-years away from the Earth. A star will sometimes dim whenever an object would pass by it. That is how some planets have been found, by the dimming to causes to the star as it passes in front of it.
However, there is no planet near RIK-210 to explain for its dimming. It also doesn't have any nearby star that might cause it to be dim. RIK-210 is said to be around five to ten million years old and half as massive as the Sun.
A team led by Trevor Davis from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is looking for possible answers as to why RIK-210 dims. The star dims every 5.67 days. Its duration is short in relation to its rotation. Dimming among young stars has not been observed unlike that on older stars.
The researchers have ruled out any possibility of another object causing the star to dim, according to Phys Org. With that possibility out, the researchers speculate that it might be caused by a magnetospheric cloud. This is a cloud of plasma that has been seen in high mass stars.
The speculation has yet to be verified, as Science Alert reports. The speculation though might be possible since such clouds orbit objects such as planets and stars. This will have to be verified, and the team will continue with its study of the star. As of now, that is what the team is doing, aside from waiting to have its findings being peer reviewed.
Space has so many mysteries. This gives astronomers so much to explore. One of those is that of a young star. Astronomers find a star that mysteriously dims. Astronomers have also seen a galaxy in a state of transformation.
