The night sky has changed and scientists do not know why

How long have you peered into the night sky? Let me suppose that only a few of us - those who live away from cities, see the night sky at least approximately as it is. Meanwhile, it is believed that the starry sky above our heads is constant and unchanging. In the end, sailors have been guided by the stars for centuries, using constellations as a guide for ships. In turn, stargazers, carefully peering into the cosmic ocean, marked approximately the same outlines on the maps of the night sky. So, today we distinguish between the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, Dragon, Snake, Dolphin and at least 84 more constellations. But can it be that we did not carefully follow the sky for the head and it still changes?

How could 100 stars just go on and on?

How has the night sky changed?

Comparing 70 years of observations with recentWith images of the night sky, a group of astronomers searched for celestial objects that could have disappeared from our eyes over the decades. After many years of painstaking work, participants in the Centennial Observation Project (VASCO) published the first results in The Astronomical Journal, according to which at least 100 luminous objects that appeared in the middle of the 20th century were most likely darkened. But what happened to them and what kind of objects?

VASCO “Vanishing and Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations” is also a project of the SETI Institute, whose main task is to search for extraterrestrial civilizations.

According to the authors of the study, disappearedLight sources can be objects whose life cycle has ended. Astronomers emphasize that almost certainly preliminary conclusions correspond to natural and well-studied events, such as supernova explosions or the death of galaxies. At the same time, researchers hope that in the future the results of their work will be relevant to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

When the life cycle of some stars approachesin the end, their death is marked by a supernova flash - a phenomenon during which the brightness of a star increases sharply, gradually fading. As a result of the flare, supernovae collapse into the densest objects in the universe - neutron stars or mysterious black holes. Read more about the evolution and death of stars and other celestial objects in our material.

The image shows starry sky areas where light sources have disappeared

The ability to see in detail how has changedthe starry sky over the past 70-100 years will allow astronomers to learn new, unexpected ways of the death of stars or galaxies. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that the source of the disappeared light may be an alien civilization that has learned to use the energy of its own star or even its galaxy.

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Disappeared stars

During the study, astronomers analyzedabout 600 million light sources and found about 150,000 at first glance disappeared objects. They compared these missing light sources with images from other data sets in order to identify the remaining candidates and determine which of them are real light sources, and not a camera malfunction or other malfunctions. Ultimately, the researchers identified 100 extinct light sources.

At the moment, scientists can not say with certainty what these disappeared light sources are.

If further observations confirm thatthe extinct light is real astronomical events, then they can be divided into two categories. Most likely, the detected disappeared objects indicate flares of red dwarfs, variable stars, the afterglow of gamma-ray bursts and other short-term cosmic phenomena. The authors of the scientific work note that as further observations, hundreds more sources will be discovered.

It looks like the James Webb telescope, which will be launched in 2021

In addition, the launch will take place in 2021The James Webb Space Telescope (NASA), which will allow you to study the atmosphere of distant exoplanets in more detail, and in 2022 the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will be launched - a wide-angle large viewing telescope-reflector that will scan the sky every three nights. The new telescopes, the study authors rightly believe, will accelerate the hunt for strange, endangered objects that change the appearance of the night sky.

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It should be noted that 80% of the world's inhabitantsnever seen the sky as it is. It is all about artificial light sources that caused light pollution or sky-lighting with artificial light sources. In addition to the fact that light pollution interferes with astronomical observations, it changes the biorhythms of living beings. Moreover, due to an excess of light in cities, fish die. Read more about this problem in the fascinating material of my colleague Ramis Ganiev.