Scientists from the California Institute of Technology led by Trevor David reported the discovery of another star, which is being eclipsed by an as-yet unknown object. The scientists described their research in an article posted in the archive of preprints. A year ago, the star KIC 8462852 attracted attention, in which, thanks to data from the Kepler space telescope, scientists discovered strange dips in the light curve - the star sometimes became dimmer, its brightness drop can be 22%, which cannot be explained by the passage of even a large planet in front of it. Over the course of the year, scientists have published many papers, including exotic explanations of the phenomenon of the star, called Tabby.
The star RIK-210 is located in the so-called OB-association of Scorpio - Centauri - 472 light years from the Sun. Using the Kepler telescope, it was found that the dips in the star's brightness are also large - they reach 15%. However, the difference from Tabby is that these eclipses by an unknown object occur strictly periodically, with an interval of 5.67 days, and they are synchronized with the proper rotation of the star itself.
Spectrometric observations have ruled out the possibility that the star is being eclipsed by a second, less bright star or a so-called brown dwarf, in addition, eclipses cannot be caused by a single spherical body due to the fact that eclipses from time to time have a different shape and duration. Scientists suggest that the most likely cause of the darkening is a cloud of abnormally cold plasma inside the magnetosphere, rotating synchronously with the star itself. However, further observations are required to answer this question.