Chapter Two: The Impossible Star

“So what you’re saying is that instead of going clubbing with me tonight, you’re going up into the observatory – alone – to stargaze?”

Footsteps came to a halt, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Aina, come one. If you’re going to go up there, at least be with an attractive guy. Or, you could go clubbing with me!” “Not everyone thinks with their libido, Clara. Now please, this is a large project grade, and this is the only night I can use the telescope.”

Clara groaned, “Fine, but don’t coming whining to me when you change your mind.”

Aina rolled her eyes as she opened the door to the observatory. “Like that’s going to happen,” she muttered. The door slammed shut as she headed up the stairs toward the telescope.

She paused as she reached a window. She could see her friend retreating off campus, and sighed at her barely-there outfit. Unlike Clara, she preferred being alone, lost in the stars. The pounding music of clubs just gave her a headache. Besides, the kind of guys that hung out at clubs was typically far less than desirable.

Her gaze wandered over the city.

While Barcelona was indisputably beautiful to look at, the light pollution made it nearly impossible to observe space without the assistance of a telescope. She could only dimly make out some of the brighter stars in the sky. Most visible was Sirius, one of the brightest in the night sky from Earth. She could also see Polaris, the North Star. It was impossible, however, to see complete constellations, not even prominent ones like Ursa Major, Sagittarius, or Capricorn.

Just as she was about to continue up the stairs, a sudden pulse of light caught her eye. One of the faint stars had suddenly brightened.

She watched as it pulsed, its luminosity changing from nearly invisible to shining.

“That’s…that’s impossible,” she murmured to herself, leaning closer to the window, her fingers curling tightly around the sill. She watched as it once again dimmed, disappearing into the blackness of the night. She waiting, holding her breath, not daring to move, not even blink.

And as quickly as it had disappeared, it flared back into sight, beaming with unnatural radiance. She breathed raggedly, her breath fogging up the glass pane. She furiously rubbed it clean with her sleeve; however, it was gone once more.

With a rush of adrenaline, she tore herself from the window, racing up the stairs. Her footsteps pounded on the wood as she ran up the circular flight of steps. At last she burst into the room, and ran over to the large telescope.

Luckily she already knew how to operate the impressive instrument, and punched in the coordinates for the patch of sky the mysterious star had been in. The telescope moved slowly into position, and as soon as it came to a halt, she looked into the eyepiece, and into the night sky.

The backdrop of stars was at last visible, sprinkling the sky with hundreds of thousands of sparkling points of light.
However, the one object she was looking for was not in sight. She waited, breath hitched, for several long minutes until she decided it had to have been some sort of aircraft, or advanced military technology.

Aina collapsed in the chair, and reached into backpack for her binder to get the assignment out.

She punched in the new coordinates for the telescope. She was supposed to be observing Alpha Centauri, not Betelgeuse.
An hour ticked by as she recorded information from the star. She took spectral radiation scans, and recorded the elements that came back from the star. Unsurprisingly, it was mainly hydrogen and helium.

The telescope was not powerful enough to distinguish the star as two stars, as it was a binary system, but it was still powerful enough to aid her in gathering the data she needed for her project.

As she put her eye to the lens once more, an object to the left of the binary system caught her attention. Shining with unusual luster was a star she hadn’t noticed before. It stood out from the background, glittering brightly, twinkling due to atmospheric distortion.

Before her eyes it grew more luminous, and through the magnification of the telescope, she could see it was indeed pulsing.
She carefully centered the telescope on it, and launched into a light analysis.

Analyzing light was one of the easiest ways to distinguish what an object was, and it didn’t take as long as a full spectral scan. She watched as the data appeared on the computer screen, and frowned. “There’s no way,” murmured the astonished student.

Light analysis measured how much of each color light was reflected or radiated by an object. The Sun, for example, showed mostly yellow light. Even if one analyzed a street light or car headlights, one color would be prominent. But according to the data before her, all of the light colors were completely equal.

She quickly returned to the telescope, looking back into the night sky.

The object, she wasn’t so sure it was a star anymore, was still there. She quickly made up her mind, and ran a spectral scan. Her foot tapped anxiously as she waited for the command to process, and then to interpret the gathered information.

Several minutes later the chart popped up on the screed. She quickly pulled out her notes to try and interpret the results. There was evidence of hydrogen, helium, and other basic evidence. However, her eye was drawn to the one line that ran down near the middle of graph. Iron – impossible. Iron and hydrogen could not exist together on a star, unless it was a binary system, but she didn’t know of this one, and there weren’t many to know of that were visible from Earth.

She hit the scan button away, unwilling to accept the results. Something had to have gone wrong. But after another long wait, the results were the same.

Impossible.