The Case of the Missing Stars

by Thea Kaufman, age 10

When astronomers gazed into the sky, they noticed something unusual: some of the biggest stars of the universe seemed to have disappeared. After this, scientists grew curious as to why this occurred.

Scientists and non-scientists can think of two different explanations as to why these stars are disappearing. Some of these stars are at least eight times the mass of the sun, and are believed to disappear due to exploding, like other smaller stars. However, an astronomer at Northwest University in Illinois, Charlie Kilpatrick, believes one possibility is that, "they are not exploding at all, the stars are just leaving our sight, and transforming into black holes immediately after." Another possibility is that bigger stars cough out a maelstrom of dust and become smaller.

The James Webb Space Telescope brings insight for scientists. They were seeing evidence of stars suddenly disappearing into black holes, and peeking through thick dust coats. Since black holes are not easy to spot, having thick-colored dust covering the black hole or star makes it even harder to spot. In the summer of 2025, astronomers were fortunate to witness a star in the constellation of Eridanus exploding 40 million light-years away, in the galaxy NGC 1637, with a telescopic network. The scientists wanted to know more and wondered if they could use images to find which star exploded in the constellation of Eridanus. When the telescope came back with results, the astronomers were surprised to find that the images came up empty, with no sign of any black hole or dust. Although there was confusion at first, author Aswin Suresh, clarified that "any dust makes it impossible for the light to escape."

The Webb team came into the conversation, and said that they could find the star that blew up. They knew the star was hidden by dust and knew how to find it because it was a red supergiant. Emma Beason, an astronomer at Liverpool John Moore University in England, said that the other red supergiants could simply just be "blinking out of existence," as a thought.

There are still various unknown elements about space and continued research is being done to learn more about the universe. Stars are spheres of plasma pushed together to create beautiful, luminous objects of different sizes in space. They are satisfying to look at and create a curiosity for people around the world.

[Source: National Geographic]