After 600 Years, Astronomers Finally Solve the Mystery of the Missing ‘Guest Star’

In October 1408, in Ming Dynasty China, court astronomers recorded a strange celestial event: a bright yellow object, unmoving in the sky, shining steadily for over ten nights. It was described as “as large as a cup” and “pure yellow color, smooth and bright”—a sight so notable that it prompted formal documentation by imperial officials. For centuries, this 1408 “guest star” has been a historical curiosity with no clear-cut identity. But thanks to a new discovery, astronomers think they’ve finally figured out the source. In a recent paper posted to the preprint server arXiv, researchers led by Boshun Yang, an astronomer at the University of Science and Technology of China, report an overlooked report by Hu Guang, a court official in charge of “congratulatory memorials and laudatory poems addressed to the emperor,” as described in the paper. This official document from the Imperial Astronomical Bureau provides a fuller, more authentic account than previous descriptions of the event and ... Read full article.