The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction

print out the ESO image and put it over his photo. Peter got a second transparency. In the long run, this procedure could be expensive. He took the still warm, freshly printed foil from the collecting tray and put it over the screen. Stop. First he had to display his telephoto on the screen. He switched it to red tones. Next attempt. He pressed the foil against the screen and examined the result.
Aha! There was a dark red circle at the bottom right. He noted the spot and took off the transparency. On the printout, there was a star here. The image of his telescope, however, showed only the dark red background. Empty. The algorithm must have failed at this point. He worked his way from star to star until the missing star blocked it.
But this made him only partly happy. He’d found out why his expensive telescope wouldn’t display IC 342... but, what had happened to the damned star that was supposed to guide the algorithm there? After all, the ESO catalog still showed it quite clearly. Stars don’t just disappear, they gasp out their lives in gigantic explosions. This would have been visible in the picture. It was a pity. Even with a supernova discovery, his name would have been entered in the databases.
The most probable cause for a star not being visible was an occultation. Something dark must have found its way in front of the star. If that something were near the Earth, it would not have to be too large. Very few known objects, including asteroids or comets, could obscure the star from Earth’s perspective, but if such an object did, it couldn’t repeat such an occultation for two days in a row.
He had to ask someone who knew more about it than he did. But to do that, he’d have to know which star he had lost. Objects were labeled in the ESO image. He read the coordinates from the image and called up the SIMBAD server’s website for a coordinate search. To be on the safe side, he allowed a radius of one arc minute just in case his telescope was somehow slightly out of alignment.
The result appeared after seconds. ‘Sig Dra’ appeared on the screen, so he had Sigma Draconis in front of him, which was in the Draco (Dragon) constellation. That made sense. The constellation was north of Camelopardalis, where IC 342 was located. If the tracking algorithm wanted to reliably maneuver to IC 342, Sigma Draconis was a good intermediate point. Or at least it was when it was shining.
But it didn’t look like a candidate for a supernova. Peter checked out the dates. Sigma Draconis had been known by the official name Alsafi for ten years. It belonged to spectral class G9 V, which made it quite similar to the sun. However, it had only three-quarters of the sun’s radius and 85 percent of its mass, and its luminosity was only 41 percent of the luminosity of our home star. It appeared bright in the sky because it was only about 19 light-years away from Earth. With an age of about 3 billion years, Alsafi was relatively young. Since it burned less hotly than the sun, it should have a much longer life. To stop shining all of a sudden was utterly impossible. That would mean the sun might also no longer be reliable.
Peter leaned back, and his gaze fell on the clock. The time had passed so quickly! He had to leave in 15 minutes. Franziska was always punctual and didn’t like to be kept waiting. What was he going to do with his lost star? Should he just wait and see if it showed up again tomorrow? That, he thought, was just as unlikely as the disappearance. It would also be very annoying. No one would believe him that Sigma Draconis was just plain absent from the sky for two days. If, on the other hand, this star from the immediate neighborhood remained missing for a long time, that would be an exciting discovery.
He had 12 minutes left. Who could he tell about his discovery? If he approached a research institute with his observations, they would ignore him. He was only a math and physics teacher, and not even a member of an astronomy club. Journals were piled up on the large shelf of his desk. He still preferred to read some things on paper rather than on the net.
At the top was the latest issue of SPACE, issue 1/2026. He took the magazine and opened it. Its smell of printer’s ink was so good, and when he stroked the glossy paper, it felt completely different than on a screen. He flipped to the center of the issue. There, on four pages, experts answered readers’ questions. Peter imagined that journalists knew researchers from every field and could present them with interesting questions. A researcher would not simply ignore such a question. After all, that person’s name would then appear under the article.
Peter turned to the last page. The editorial office accepted questions at the e-mail address space@emedia.de. He had seven minutes left to formulate a message. He quickly switched to his e-mail program, started a new message, and entered the address and subject line.
“Question about a disappeared star.”
No, that sounded too crazy. He was sure the editorial team got suspicious-looking messages, too.
“Question about Sigma Draconis.”
Hmm, that was perhaps too specific. He wondered if the editors would answer if his question was not interesting for all the other readers. He’d rather not take any risks.
“Can stars like the sun just go out?”
That was a suitable way to put it. As a reader, it would convince him to read the corresponding answer. He looked at the clock. Four minutes to go. He must not take too much time for the rest of the message.
“Dear Editor,” he wrote. “I tried to observe Sigma Draconis in the telescope yesterday. With an apparent magnitude of 4.67 mag, it should be easy to