Astronomers have recorded a rare "star dance"

This system is called an eclipsing binary, or eclipsing a double star. From Earth it appears that two stars are passing each other

above or outshine each other.This happens because they rotate around a common center of gravity, alternately covering each other. Such eclipses cause the amount of light emitted by the binary system to periodically decrease.

We have documented the full rise and fall of this binary star. 

James Davenport, assistant professor of astronomy at Washington State University and deputy director of the DIRAC Institute

According to Davenport, such systemsare rare, and today scientists know of only 12 of them. To document all the action of the stars, scientists observed them and looked for long-term changes.  

The system of two stars was named HS Hydra, itis 342 light years away from us, it is a relatively close and bright system, where stars revolve around each other every 1.5 days. Scientists first discovered it in 1965.

Davenport and his team monitored the system withvia the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS. They observed that the system was reduced in brightness by only 0.0075 magnitude from HS Hydra, which means that the stars almost did not cover each other during eclipses.

The team predicts that HS Hydra eclipses will end around February 2021.

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