On July 19, 1952, Palomar Observatory was undertaking a photographic survey of the night sky. Part of the project was to take multiple images of the same region of sky, to help identify things such as asteroids. At around 8:52 that evening a photographic plate captured the light of three stars clustered together. At a magnitude of 15, they were reasonably bright in the image. At 9:45 pm the same region of sky was captured again, but this time the three stars were nowhere to be seen. In less than an hour they had completely vanished.
Bro you’d need at least K3 to do that and the IR signature would be all over the place. Why would you paint a target like that SMH
A relatively low-tier K2 civilisation could almost certainly do it, but why the fluctuation in the IR signature rather than a more steady “shadow” indicative of a more consistent harvesting/drain?