We are “celebrating” the start of UK lock-down Nr.2 (at least there are lots of fireworks outside 😊), so let’s look back at the light curve of the week Nr. 63, which got posted at the start of UK lock-down Nr.1, and see what the star has done since.
The light curve is of the young star 2MASS J20505039+4450115, which is situated in the Pelican Nebula. For the first two years that we observed the star, it looked like a ‘normal’ young star, i.e. it varied by about one magnitude stochastically over time scales of a few months. Other than that, it stayed within these bounds.
However, the object then underwent a long (at least one year) and deep dimming event. The magnitude dimmed by at least 3mag in I and R. In V the object was undetectable in our data for a while. By the time we last looked at it, the dimming, which showed several humps, had almost finished and the star had returned to roughly pre-diming magnitudes.
Since then, the star has had two further deep dimming events. These ones however, where very short. Only a few days to two weeks long. Overall the brightness of the star has again decreased by 3mag compared to the observed bright state and maybe we are seeing another longer dimming event, comparable to the one two years ago. Time will tell……..