One of the most haunting modern star-myths is
what has come to be known as "The Epsilon Bootis
Affair". In the late 20s, Dutch experimenters
at Eindhoven recorded a curious effect of time-
delayed radar echoes (LDE) apparently originating
from near the Moon, & more specifically, at one of
the (Lagrange) points in space where an object
could repose indefinitely in a stable orbit. Some
44 years later the young Scottish writer Duncan
Lunan plotted these echoes & seemed to discover
a star map--of the constellation Bootis--which
singled out the star epsilon Bootis. Or at least,
a star map from 13,000 years ago (having shifted
in the interim)! --I first read about this in the
January 1974 issue of Analog, & his
almost Lovellian speculations, of an intelligent
race from a planet of the dimmer, yellow star
being slowly destroyed as the brighter, red giant
star expanded, so that finally they would send
a probe to communicate the nature of their disaster
(which arrived here a little early for our
scientists--)...inspired one of my own scifi
stories. (Odd, that when another writer treated
this star, he totally disregarded Lunan's thesis!)
  Later determinations of the star's
distance & hence luminosity (shortening its lifetime
to such an extent that a life-bearing planet around
it become unrealistic) caused Lunan to retract, but
it is still a beautiful idea.