A "flashing giant" was found in the Milky Way - this is an unusual star with varying brightness

The star was named the star VVV-WIT-08: it is located in the center of the Galaxy, at a distance of more than 25 thousand light years

years. The peculiarity of the object is that its brightness first decreases by a factor of 30 over several months, and then becomes brighter again. 

The authors of the new work believe that the foundThe "blinking giant" belongs to a new class of binary star systems, where a huge star, hundreds of times larger than the Sun, is eclipsed every few decades by an invisible orbiting satellite - a smaller star or a large planet surrounded by an opaque disk.

We observed a dark, large and elongated object passing between us and a distant star, and we can only speculate about its origin. 

Sergei Koposov, one of the authors of the work and a fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

Also known are half a dozen star systems wheregiant stars are periodically eclipsed by large opaque disks. The authors proposed to single out the giant "blinking" stars in a separate class and purposefully study them.

Now the main task of the authors, according to them, is to find out what these hidden satellites are and how they ended up surrounded by disks, despite the fact that they rotate so far from the giant star

«The challenge is to figure out what these hidden satellites are around stars and how they ended up surrounded by disks. 

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