But then the telescope stuttered again and abruptly stopped. Crap. The error yesterday had been no accident. He looked at the smartphone screen. Tracking worked via pattern recognition. The app used known star positions to analyze what the telescope was seeing, and then used that data to calculate which direction it needed to move the field of view. This was a pretty reliable mechanism.
Errors could occur temporarily if any unexpected objects interfered with the pattern recognition. However, the usual suspects, such as manmade Earth satellites, were already calculated by the program based on their known orbits. So the problem would have to be an unknown object that shone in roughly the same place yesterday as it was shining today. Did such a thing even exist? Peter looked through the telescope. His eyes had not completely adapted yet, and he could not recognize any special features.
He mirrored the telescope image onto the smartphone and analyzed it in a special program that knew all the star charts. It couldn’t find any additional celestial bodies, either—a pity, actually. He could have been lucky enough to find a new comet. He would have named it Franziska, which would please his wife.
A puzzle. He restarted the tracking, and this time, too, it got stuck just before the destination. Was the mechanism defective? He let the program search for NGC 1788, the ‘Cosmic Bat’ Nebula, located near the belt stars of Orion. The telescope obeyed the app’s commands, and finally it pointed to Orion’s belt. Peter looked in the eyepiece to confirm that NGC 1788 was actually in his sight.
“Alexa, track IC 342,” he said.
One last attempt. For a moment, it looked as if he would be successful, but then the telescope juddered to a halt again. But why? Maybe the solution to the riddle was in there. He pressed the shutter release, and the camera took a series of photographs of what the telescope was currently seeing.
Peter carried the instrument back into the hallway. His fingers felt frozen stiff, so he warmed them on the heater in the kitchen. He wondered if he should go to sleep, but he wasn’t tired, so he fetched his notebook computer from the study. From there, he accessed the telescope’s memory, retrieved the last images, and instructed the software to superimpose them.
The result was not recognizably different from the individual exposures—there was no object hiding in one shot that only became visible after he’d stacked several exposures. There was no unusual object whatsoever. Everything looked the same as it had looked for billions of years, when the youngest of the stars born in this section of the sky glowed.
It was a mystery. Fortunately, he was not the only amateur astronomer in the world. He registered in an online forum for like-minded people and posed his problem. The answers were not very helpful. Someone recommended that he have his telescope cleaned, another blamed it on the software, and a third suggested that he try a different target. So he sent an e-mail to the manufacturer of the tracking software. The answer came immediately. The hotline was taking a well-deserved break over the weekend, and they would contact him again on Monday.
Crap. He couldn’t get any further. Peter didn’t like going to bed with unresolved problems, but he had no choice at the moment. He stripped down to his underwear, lay down on the sofa, and pulled the blanket up to his chin.
February 22, 2026 – Passau
“Good morning, Peter,” Franziska greeted him.
She was always in such a good mood in the early morning that it was almost unbearable.
“Shit. Is it tomorrow already?” he mumbled, pulling the covers over his head.
“Look. It snowed!”
What? He straightened up with a jerk. He hoped he’d carried the telescope into the house!
“Did I?” he asked.
“Don’t worry. It’s in the hallway.”
Franziska had understood his question immediately, the beauty of such a long relationship. It would not have been the first time he’d forgotten his telescope outside. Peter wanted to lie down again, but a pain shot up his back. Not this, too?
“Oh, is it pinching again?” asked Franziska.
It must be obvious to her. Peter nodded.
“You should join me in my exercises. They’re good for back pain,” said his wife.
“They’re good at helping you.”
“They would help you, too. You’d just have to try it once.”
He waved it off. “Don’t bother. I don’t have the energy for that right now.”
Franziska sat down on the sofa and stroked his thigh. “What’s bothering you? You seem particularly grumpy this morning.”
Grumpy? Me? Impossible. “Nothing,” he said.
“Come on. There’s something going on.”
Franziska wouldn’t take no for an answer, so he might as well tell her. “On the telescope, the tracking no longer works, but it’s only for one, very specific target.”
“Ah, I can imagine how that would bug you. I’m sure you’ve already ruled out all possible sources of error.”
“You bet. It might actually just be another bug in the software.”
“A bug that only occurs on a specific target?”
“It’s not like I tested that many other targets.”
“How many have you tried?”
“Two.”
Actually, it had been only one other destination. But something told him the problem only occurred at IC 342.
“I see,” said Franziska.
“You’re right. I could try a few other targets,” he replied.
“But I didn’t say anything. Although, you’re probably right.”
“It’s just a feeling, but I’m sure it has to do with that particular target.” A feeling. In other circumstances, he would have made fun of it, but unfortunately he had nothing else to show right now.
“Tracking works through pattern recognition, right?” his wife asked.
“Exactly. But where it’s stuck, nothing has changed. It shouldn’t get stuck.”
“What do you mean, nothing has changed?”
“Nothing has been added. I was hoping that I might have found a new comet by chance. I’d even thought of a name.”
“Too bad. I would have been happy if a new comet had my name on it. Preferably a great comet that predicted lots of disaster for people. Later it would have been called ‘2026, the year Franziska announced death to humanity’, or something.”
“I guess that’s not going to work out.”
“Someday you’ll find a comet. I know you will. But the fact that nothing has been added is one thing. Pattern recognition might also fail if something is missing that should be there—or is that a stupid idea?”
Peter straightened up despite the pain in his back. “Of course, that would be a possibility! Thank you, Franziska. I’ll check right away to see if anything is missing from the telescope images.”
“Later. Now, we’ll have breakfast. The rolls are still warm.”
They usually went for a long walk following their Sunday breakfast. After three or four hours, they would stop for lunch at a pleasant inn. But Franziska had given him an idea that he would like to check out right away. He chewed on the rest of his roll but didn’t dare tell her.
“What do you say we meet at Rixinger’s at one o’clock?” asked Franziska suddenly.
The Rixinger was an inn with traditional German cuisine. In the summer, you could enjoy sitting outside under old chestnut trees. It was located in a neighboring village, about 20 kilometers as the crow flies.
“I, yes, that’s a great idea,” he replied.
“Then you can take your time trying to figure out why the tracking isn’t working.”
“Exactly. And you’re not mad?”
“No. I’m going for a ride on my bike. You can join me there by car. And for the tradeoff, I get the car for the way back.”
Peter smiled. On the way back, it was uphill almost all the way. That was why Franziska didn’t really like biking home from the Rixinger.
“Agreed. But what about the snow?” he asked.
; “Just look at it. It’s not staying around. The sun is supposed to come out later, too, my weather app said.”
“See you!” called Franziska from the hallway.
“Have a good trip!”
“And don’t forget, you have to leave at twenty minutes before one. The Rixinger closes its kitchen at half past one!”
Yes, that was typical for these village inns, and his mouth was watering for a schnitzel. Peter winced when the door slammed shut, but it meant he was alone. He rolled his office chair closer to the desk, pushed the pile of classwork aside, and flipped open the notebook.
What was the best way for him to verify the tracking algorithm? He brought up the last image he had taken with his telescope, which should show the area where the algorithm failed. At first glance, there was nothing special to notice. So he needed comparison material.
Peter moved his chair a little closer to the desk. Franziska would scold him for sitting too close to the screen, but he didn’t need glasses this way. He started a program that could retrieve star charts from all available databases. He always enjoyed his program icon, a stylized sun with many rays, displayed when he switched through the running programs.
He switched to the image server of ESO, the European Southern Observatory. The program asked him for the galactic coordinates and the size of the desired image section, data which he had to look up in the telescope’s tracking app. He entered the data and clicked on ‘Download,’ and shortly thereafter, an orange image full of stars appeared in the program window. To be able to compare better, he switched to a grayscale display.
Good. Now he had the photo from his telescope on the screen on the left, and on the right he could see what the expensive instrument of the European Southern Observatory had observed in the sky in the same region at some other time. The area contained thousands of stars. When Peter squinted, he could see at least ten times as many stars on the right as on the left. He let the program lay a coordinate grid over it and immediately noticed the first problem, that the image coming out of his telescope was oriented differently. He rotated it by about 30 degrees, and it matched better.
But there were still far too many stars in the ESO photo. In the image viewer, he switched from the preset logarithmic to a linear scale. The faintest stars, which his hobby telescope could not see, faded into the background. Much better! Now he only needed to systematically search through both images. He arranged them side by side on the screen. His eyes wandered from left to right, left to right, again and again, but this soon became exhausting. His head ached after barely five minutes. Surely there had to be a better way?
As Peter moved a little away from his desk, his gaze fell on the class assignments. Sometimes he evaluated them with the help of a stencil. What if he made himself a star stencil? First he adjusted the scale of the two pictures more precisely. Then he increased the contrast in the photo from his telescope. The stars became even brighter, while the background turned black.
He got a foil from his office cabinet, put it in the printer, and printed the picture on the foil. The stencil was translucent wherever there was a bright star in the image. He put it over the screen but couldn’t see anything. Sure, if a black spot shines through, he couldn’t see it. He changed the color representation of the ESO data to redscale. Much better.
But again, nothing stood out. He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. Of course! He’d done it the wrong way around. He had to 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 [email protected]. 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 locate.”
Too many details. He deleted everything except the salutation.
“Can stars that haven’t reached the end of their life cycle, main sequence stars like the sun or Sigma Draconis, just disappear? I am not talking about a supernova. I know that does not occur in a single star of this size. No, I’m wondering if such a star could just collapse on itself without us noticing anything from a great distance. I would be very glad for an answer. Best regards, Peter J. Kraemer.”
The spell checker turned the ‘ae’ into an ‘ä.’ He corrected the error. How many times had he tried to get such idiosyncrasies out of his computer?
‘Send.’
He leaned back. Now he felt better. He didn’t have an answer yet, but he felt he had set something in motion.
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The Beacon: Hard Science Fiction Page 2