Epsilon Aurigae facts for kids

Epsilon Aurigae, also known as Maaz or Almaaz, is a huge yellow supergiant star. It is part of the Auriga constellation, which looks like a charioteer in the night sky.

This giant star has a special secret: it's orbited by another pair of stars, called a binary star system. This binary star is hidden inside a thick cloud of dust. This dust cloud is so cool that it only gives off infrared light, which is a type of light we can't see with our eyes.

A Star with a Mystery

For a long time, scientists were puzzled by Epsilon Aurigae. They saw something huge orbiting the main star, and they first thought it was the biggest star ever discovered!

Solving the Puzzle

Later, astronomers figured out that the giant object wasn't a star at all. It was actually a thick, flat cloud of dust surrounding a pair of smaller stars. This dust cloud is so big that it blocks out a lot of the light from the main star every few decades, causing the star to dim.

Other Ideas About the Cloud

At one point, some scientists even thought the mysterious dust cloud might hide a black hole. However, this idea is no longer supported by what we know about Epsilon Aurigae today.

Images for kids

• 

  This graph shows how Epsilon Aurigae's brightness changed during an eclipse from 2009 to 2011.

• 

  An artist's drawing of the bright yellow star and its companion stars hidden in a dusty disk.

• 

  An artist's drawing of the Epsilon Aurigae system when the dust cloud is blocking the main star's light.

• 

  A map to help find Epsilon Aurigae. The numbers show how bright other stars nearby are.