Stars in this phase are especially dangerous. Called Mira variables, after the star Mira, the first of their kind to be found, they can change their brightness by a factor of ten in as many days.8 Within a couple weeks, a Mira variable and grow ten times brighter and ten times dimmer. Swelling, expanding, contracting, shrinking. Repeated ad nauseum. Pulsing and churning, sending their systems into total chaos. The name Mira itself means “amazing one,” when astronomers hundreds of years ago watched over the course of only a single year one of the brightest stars in the sky fade to invisibility.
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