The star known as Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion has displayed variable luminosity for many years, yet in the past few months the star has broken this pattern and dimmed dramatically. Expert observers claim that this could indicate that the star’s end is imminent. Standard astrophysical models, according to Forbes, suggest that there is “little doubt” Betelgeuse is on its way to a supernovae explosion. This is the prescribed fate for large red stars, such as Betelgeuse, which is a red supergiant approximately 20 times the size of our Sun.



We are told that this star’s bright fiery death will be visible by daylight here on Earth, with a luminosity approximating that of the full moon. Explosions such as these, however, seem to relatively rare in the course of human history. The last observation of any event even approximating a supernova within our galaxy, for instance, occurred in 1604. A few others date back into the early first millennium A.D. So,

…does this mean that stars simply don’t die that frequently?

Absolutely not.

In fact, it appears that stars are blinking out of sight around us and have been doing so for quite some time. A team of scientists have been tracking the disappearance of stars across nearly 70 years of data. The project, known as VASCO or “Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations,” has detailed the disappearance of some 150,000 such objects. The authors of the VASCO study suggest that, like Betelgeuse, the light sources examined also bear the quintessential red-supergiant appearance. Much effort was made to whittle this number of objects down to only those that could only be described as stars, ruling out potential artifacts including plate scratches, active-galactic nuclei, highly mobile objects, and other forms of known variation in celestial object brightness. So, what became of these stars, if they didn’t supernova?



