Week of March 15-21, 2026
This spring, there'll be an extra star in our nighttime sky. It's not one you'll notice easily, but it's certainly visible if you take the time to look.
The star is called Mira, a name that contains the Latin root for the word "miracle," and means wonderful."
While Mira is not a new star, it's one we haven't seen for nearly a year. That's because it pulsates in brightness over about 11 months, becoming easily visible in the night sky, then fading far beyond naked-eye visibility. Right now, it shines near its brightest and outshines all but one star in the southern constellation of Cetus.
The star wasn't discovered until Aug. 13, 1596. On that night, German/Dutch astronomer David Fabricius was searching for the elusive planet Mercury when, along the way, he spotted a "new" star in Cetus. He carefully recorded its position and brightness, but a few months later, when he looked for it again, he couldn't find it. Quite some time later, he looked again, and there it was! You can imagine his bewilderment!
Not until 1638 did astronomer Johannes Holwarda demonstrate that this "new" star of Fabricius varied in brightness over a period of about 11 months, and that's why it seemed to vanish temporarily from Fabricius' view.
This was the first star ever to show a change in brightness, so in 1662, Johannes Hevelius gave the star its present (and quite appropriate) name: Mira, the Wonderful. Today, it's recognized by astronomers as the prototype of an entire class of variable stars known as long-period variables. And, as its name suggests, Mira is indeed quite a wonderful and intriguing star.
Over its 11-month cycle, the star pulsates not only in brightness but in size as well. We cannot see this change with the unaided eye or even with a telescope, but astronomers have calculated that its diameter varies by about 20%. At its largest and brightest, the star swells to more than 300 times the size of our sun; that means that if it were to replace the sun in the solar system, its orb would swallow the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and stretch halfway to Jupiter!
Even its temperature changes; over the course of its pulsations, its temperature varies from about 3,000 F to about 4,000 F.
Mira is not alone. It has a smaller companion star — a white dwarf, we believe — that is bound to Mira by gravitation, and we've learned recently that this star is surrounded by a protoplanetary disk where new planets are in the process of forming.
And if that isn't cool enough, astronomers have found that Mira sports a strange comet-like tail about 13 lightyears long, possibly formed out of material ejected by the star over the past 300 centuries.
Just after dark this week, look low in the west-southwestern sky, and use the accompanying illustration to trace the pattern of stars known as Cetus, the whale, just above and to the south of the brilliant planet Venus.
Up near its fluke — in the middle of this constellation — appearing to unknowing eyes as "just another star," lies the unique and wonderful star known as Mira.
Visit Dennis Mammana at dennismammana.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
The star Mira is visible in the nighttime sky for the first time in nearly a year this week.
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