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The Ancient Egyptian papyrus Cairo 86637 calendar is the oldest preserved historical document of naked eye observations of a variable star, the eclipsing binary Algol -- a manifestation of Horus, a god and a king. This calendar contains lucky or unlucky prognoses for each day of one year. Researchers have performed a statistical analysis of the Cairo Calendar mythological texts. Their analysis revealed that the periods of Algol (2.85 days) and the Moon (29.6 days) strongly regulate the actions of deities in this calendar. "Until now, there were only conjectures that many of the mythological texts of the Cairo Calendar...

Enlarge ImageMutual attraction. The binary Algol stars share a powerful, permanent magnetic field.Credit: W. Peterson et al./NRAO/AUI/NSF Taking advantage of an unusual pair of nearby stars, astronomers have for the first time captured images of a magnetic field generated by a star other than our sun. Studying that field should help researchers gain a much better understanding of the internal dynamics that produce stellar magnetic fields, which in our sun's case can influence everything from climate to satellite orbits to telecommunications. Astronomers have indirectly detected magnetic activity associated with other stars. But because of the great distances and the...