A century-old stellar mystery may finally have an explanation

For more than a century, astronomers have puzzled over a strange discrepancy in the historical record.

Theta Eridani, a modest star in the constellation Eridanus, is the third-brightest star in its constellation, with a magnitude of 2.9.

But ancient astronomers described it very differently.

A new study, posted to the arXiv preprint server on June 29, has proposed a plausible explanation for this mystery. ...