An international team of astronomers have observed a giant star in our galaxy that has decreased in brightness by a factor of 30, so that it nearly disappeared from the sky. While many stars change in brightness because they pulsate or are eclipsed by another star in a binary system, it’s exceptionally rare for a star to become fainter over a period of several months and then brighten up again. Is this a new class of ‘blinking giant’ binary star system? Astronomers are not sure.