New Observations May Finally Explain the Mysterious Fading of Tabby’s Star

Alien Megastructure? ‘Tabby’s Star’ Continues to Baffle Scientists. Alien megastructure? – Nearly a year after first making headlines around the world, “Tabby’s star” is still guarding its secrets. In September 2015, a team led by Yale University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian announced that a star about 1,500 light-years from Earth called KIC 8462852 had dimmed oddly and dramatically several times over the past few years. These dimming events, which were detected by NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler space telescope, were far too substantial to be caused by an orbiting planet, scientists said. (In one case, 22 percent of the star’s light was blocked. For comparison, when huge Jupiter crosses the sun’s face, the result is a dimming of just 1 percent or so. ) (13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life)Boyajian and her colleagues suggested that a cloud of fragmented comets or planetary building blocks might be responsible, but other researchers noted that the signal was also consistent with a possible “alien megastructure” — perhaps a giant swarm of energy-collecting solar panels known as a Dyson sphere.

5 Scientific Explanations That Fail to Explain the “Alien Megastructure” Star

The mystery behind star KIC 8462852 (aka Tabby Star) continues. Many scientists have proposed ideas but all explanations (so far) seem as unlikely as the Dyson Sphere theory.


Video advice: Tabby’s Star (KIC 8462852) Updates: The Mystery Continues

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The mystery behind star KIC 8462852 (aka Tabby Star) continues. Many scientists have proposed ideas as to what could be causing the star to emit such strange light patterns, but all explanations (so far) seem just as unlikely as the originally proposed an alien megastructure theory. “It’s a big challenge to come up with a good explanation for a star doing three different things that have never been seen before,” Ben Montet, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement. Observations of the star have caused scientists to propose a number of ideas as to what could be orbiting this star. 1. Kepler could have malfunctioned? Nope. It has been proposed the dimming could be a dead pixel moving in and out of view with Keplar’s rotation, but researchers have tested this idea against other local stars and found it doesn’t explain the anomaly. 2. Is it a planet? Again, nope. Scientists have said early on that the dips in brightness are too dramatic to be caused by a planet moving in front of star KIC 8462852.

New observations help explain the dimming of Tabby’s Star

The overall brightness of Tabby’s Star has been gradually dimming for years. A new study suggests chunks of an exomoon’s dusty outer layers of ice, gas and carbonaceous rock may be accumulating in a disk, blocking the star’s light and making it appear to slowly fade.

“We do not genuinely have any evidence that moons exist outdoors in our solar system, however a moon being tossed off into its host star can not be that uncommon,” he stated. “This can be a contribution towards the broadening in our understanding from the exotic happenings in other solar systems that people wouldn’t have known 20 or 3 decades ago. “

Tabby’s Star, also known as KIC 8462852 or Boyajian’s Star, is named after Tabetha Boyajian, the Louisiana State University (LSU) astrophysicist who discovered the star’s unusual dimming behavior in 2015. Boyajian found that Tabby’s Star occasionally dips in brightness — sometimes by just 1 percent and other times by as much as 22 percent — over days or weeks before recovering its luster. A year later, LSU astronomer Bradley Schaefer discovered that the star’s brightness is also becoming fainter overall with time, dimming by 14 percent between 1890 and 1989.

Everyone’s Sky: Citizen Scientists’ Role Observing Tabby’s Star

by Emily St.

Studies of Tabby’s Star will also be needed beyond Elsie to be able to collect data throughout the star’s periods of ordinary brightness, so amateur astronomers will end up being much more essential as professional observatories must proceed to other targets. Maybe a novice may be the next person to note the following dimming event while some are busy with the new data!

Why did we start watching it?

Tabby’s Star might have escaped all notice in the first place, had not the Kepler space telescope surveyed and catalogued it. From this survey, it gets the crisp, formal KIC 8462852 designation. Tabby’s Star began as just one of over 145,000 stars Kepler monitors for very slight, telltale dips in their light output that may indicate planetary systems live there. Scientists chose these stars from a half million possibilities in Kepler’s field of view, focusing on those which could have Earth-like planets.

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Being an exoplanet is destroyed by strong interactions or collisions using its parent star, Metzger described, the exomoon orbiting the exoplanet may become susceptible to the pull from the system’s central star. The pressure is really so great the star rips the exomoon from its planet, resulting in the exomoon either to collide having a star or else be ejected in the system.

Tabby’s star has been under study for many years, as one of a group of stars known to dim—space scientists are interested in such stars, because in most cases, they have planets transiting them, dimming their light. But KIC 8462852 is different, Boyajian noticed—it dimmed a lot more than other stars did—at one point, as much as 20 percent. That was too much to chalk up to a planet blocking its light. Also, the star tended to stay dim for longer periods of time than other dimming stars. So she and others wondered what could be causing the dimming.

A Columbia study suggests chunks of an exomoon’s dusty outer layers of ice, gas and carbonaceous rock may be accumulating in a disk surrounding star. For years, astronomers have looked up at the sky and speculated about the strange dimming behavior of Tabby’s Star. First identified more than a c.

“We don’t really have any evidence that moons exist outside of our solar system, but a moon being thrown off into its host star can’t be that uncommon,” he said. “This is a contribution to the broadening of our knowledge of the exotic happenings in other solar systems that we wouldn’t have known 20 or 30 years ago. ”

Tabby’s Star, also known as KIC 8462852 or Boyajian’s Star, is named after Tabetha Boyajian, the Louisiana State University (LSU) astrophysicist who discovered the star’s unusual dimming behavior in 2015. Boyajian found that Tabby’s Star occasionally dips in brightness – sometimes by just 1 percent and other times by as much as 22 percent – over days or weeks before recovering its luster. A year later, LSU astronomer Bradley Schaefer discovered that the star’s brightness is also becoming fainter overall with time, dimming by 14 percent between 1890 and 1989.

OK, it’s still not aliens, but we’re finally catching Tabby’s Star in the act

Tabby’s Star is weird, dimming in brightness apparently randomly and by huge amounts. We’re pretty sure it’s not aliens building megastructures, but we do know it’s starting to dim again right now. Hopefully new observations will clear up what this mysterious object is doing!

On Sunday morning, Boyajian and her friend David Kipping, an astronomer who studies exoplanets, held an active YouTube Q&A to speak about the star. They covered lots of territory, including showing a number of from the “light curves”, graphs from the brightness versus time, for that star:


Video advice: A New Theory Reveals Why Tabby’s Star Looks So Bizarre

Researchers might be one step closer to figuring out the mysterious behavior behind Tabby’s star’s dimming.


Tabby’s Star — aka KIC 8462852, if that helps any — started making headlines back in late 2015 when it was found to be dimming in strange ways. Lots of stars get dimmer and brighter over time (we call those variable stars, and there are dozens of different types), but this one was different. The drops appeared to be mostly random in time, and while some were just little dips, some were extraordinary events. At one point, it got fainter by 15%, and then another time, it dimmed by a staggering 22%!

KIC 8462852 Archives

Last fall, astronomers were surprised when the Kepler mission reported some anomalous readings from KIC 8462852 (aka. Tabby’s Star). After noticing a strange and sudden drop in brightness, speculation began as to what could be causing it – with some going so far as to suggest that it was an alien megastructure. Naturally, the speculation didn’t last long, as further observations revealed no signs of intelligent life or artificial structures.

Out of this big sampling, they discovered that a . 6% alternation in luminosity more than a 4 year period – which labored to about . 341% each year – was very common. But none of them ever experienced the rapid decline in excess of 2% that KIC 8462852 experienced in that 200 days interval, or even the cumulative fading of threePercent it experienced overall.

“Every 30 minutes, Kepler measures the brightness of 160,000 stars in its field of view (100 square degrees, or approximately as big as your hand at arm’s length). The Kepler data processing pipeline intentionally removes long-term trends, because they are hard to separate from instrumental effects and they make the search for planets harder. Once a month though, they download the full frame, so the brightness of every object in the field can be measured. From this data, we can separate the instrumental effects from astrophysical effects by seeing how the brightness of any particular star changes relative to all its neighboring stars.

Tabby’s Star: Sorry, folks, but it *really* isn’t aliens

A fleet of telescopes watched Tabby’s Star and, sadly, found evidence it’s not a huge alien megastructure. But mysteries remain, and the solution may yet be pretty wild.

The dips are different, that is a tiny bit weird that rules out one big factor just like a planet orbiting it and periodically blocking a few of the light. We understood that anyway it might have a huge resist block 22% from the star, something half how big the star itself! That will result in the object a star on its own, so we see no proof of this type of factor.

However, this type of color-dependent drop is well known among astronomers when an object is blocked by clouds of dust. This comes in many forms, but is usually made up of rocky/metallic grains or carbon based molecules that are essentially soot. Dust is everywhere in the Universe, and can be produced when objects like comets or asteroids disintegrate or collide. The tails of comets can be very dusty, and we also see clouds of dust surrounding them if they have an outburst of material blowing off them.

KIC 8462852

You’ve probably heard of the star in today’s paper. The “WTF star” (WTF stands for “Where’s the flux?” of course) has been in the media since its discovery…

4 years of monitoring this star reveals erratic occasions when greater than 20% from the light, or flux, is missing. The little figures towards the top of the figure match the 17 quarters of Kepler‘s primary operations. This light curve graph shows the fraction of the star’s maximum brightness with time, measured in days.

An otherwise normal starBy nearly all accounts, KIC 8462852 is a normal star. It is one of over 150,000 stars observed by the Kepler space telescope during its initial four-year mission and looks like a run-of-the-mill F-type star, a little more massive than our Sun. It has no companion star yanking it around and no out-of-the-ordinary rotation or magnetic activity. It was passed over by algorithms that search for transiting exoplanets. The only reason this star stood out is thanks to Planet Hunters, a citizen science project that harnesses humans’ pattern recognition skills. Trained volunteers pored over data from Kepler and noted that KIC 8462852 dimmed significantly about two years into Kepler‘s mission, as shown above. They kept an eye on it until a huge fraction of light suddenly went missing again, nearly two years later, but differently this time. The huge dimming and irregular pattern made this star noteworthy.

Odd star’s dimming not aliens’ doing

A star’s flickering light and century-long dimming have astronomers hunting for exocomet storms, prowling dust clouds and even alien engineers.

“This claim is definitely demonstrated wrong,” states Schaefer. Hippke and Angerhausen mixed photographs with various color sensitives, he states, which can result in apparent brightness changes where you can find none. Additionally they used photographs with known defects for example smeared images and double exposures. “Colloquially put, they are garbage,” he states. “Garbage in, garbage out. ”

Tabby’s star, also known as KIC 8462852, sits about 1,480 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Tabby’s was one of roughly 150,000 stars monitored by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Kepler spent four years staring at one patch of sky, looking for dips in starlight as planets passed in front of their suns. Nearly 800 days into Kepler’s mission, the light from KIC 8462852 dropped by 15 percent and then just as quickly returned to normal. Almost two years later, a sharp 22 percent dip occurred among a series of rapid fluctuations.

Finally! The Galaxy’s Most Mysterious Star Is Dimming

Tabby’s star, otherwise known as the most mysterious star in the galaxy, is dipping drastically in brightness, giving astronomers an opportunity to explain its weird behavior.

When the Sun set all over the world, astronomers trained their telescopes on Tabby’s Star — in the amateur astronomers active in the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) towards the spectroscopists in the Keck I and II telescopes in Hawai‘i. Additional spectroscopy will range from MMT Observatory in Arizona.

What is now famously known as Tabby’s Star is a normal-looking F-class star in the field of the Kepler space telescope. Kepler’s mission was to monitor more than 150,000 stars, watching for the minute dips in brightness that would signal an exoplanet moving across the face of its parent star from Earth’s perspective. But in Tabby’s Star, Kepler — and the watchful eyes of citizen scientists involved in the Planet Hunters project — found something completely different.

Dust, Not Aliens, Causing Unusual Star Light on Tabby’s Star

Tabby’s Star, located 1,276 light years from Earth and named for its discoverer Tabetha S. Boyajian, created quite a buzz among astronomers when it was found in 2022 by the Kepler Space Observatory.

Tabby’s Star, located 1,276 many years from Earth and named because of its discoverer Tabetha S. Boyajian, produced a significant buzz among astronomers if this was discovered in ’09 through the Kepler Space Observatory. It glowed a yellow-colored white-colored coupled with temperature close to 10,000 levels F!

The running hypothesis for a while was that an advanced civilization living near that star had built a complex solar panel structure around the star to better harness its energy, and thus obstructing the star’s starlight. This hypothesis was so seriously discussed that it motivated the SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) Institute to investigate the star for electromagnetic signs, like radio signals, but they found no evidence of deliberately produced electromagnetic signals.

“Tabby’s Star” Keeps Getting Stranger

The bizarre object’s overall brightness has been gradually dimming for years.

“This star had been unique due to its sporadic dimming episodes,” Simon stated in the same statement. “However we have seen it has additional features which are just like strange, both gradually dimming for nearly 3 years after which all of a sudden getting fainter a lot more quickly. “

Kepler observed KIC 8462852, along with about 150,000 other stars, from 2009 through 2013. During the first three years of that time span, KIC 8462852 got nearly 1 percent dimmer, Montet and Simon found. The star’s brightness dropped by a surprising 2 percent over the next six months, and stayed level for the final six months of the observation period. (Kepler has since moved on to a new mission called K2, during which the telescope is hunting for exoplanets on a more limited basis and performing a variety of other observations.

Forget Alien Megastructures, New Observations Explain Tabby’s Star With Dust Alone

The most unusual star known has finally had its dimming scientifically explained. Here’s the unusual, dusty resolution.

There is however another phenomenon this suggested solution cannot take into account: the lengthy-term dimming from the star. This star is not known as “Tabby’s star” or “Boyajian’s star” since it is discovered with that particular researcher only because she brought the scientific analysis in regards to the intriguing and important new behavior.

The science of planet-hunting has truly taken off in the 21st century, with the transit method leading the way. When a planet passes in front of its parent star, relative to our line-of-sight, some of the star’s light will disappear for a short while. These transits are a prolific method for exoplanet hunters to search for worlds around other stars. As of today, we know of thousands of stars with worlds around them, and most of them were discovered by transit.

WTF: The Story of the Strangest Star We’ve Known

There’s clearly something mysterious going on. We don’t know what it is or how it works and we’re as close to figuring it out as we were in 2022.

In October 2015, Boyajian and her team printed a paper together with her team, entitled ‘Where’s The Flux’, that trigger a media craze and introduced the star inside the astronomy world’s spotlight. Since, KIC 8462852 continues to be known as Tabby’s star, Boyajian’s star and – quite aptly – the WTF star.

Hunting for planets outside the Solar System is an active field of astronomy today. The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992. Only 25 years later, there are more than 3,500 confirmed planets orbiting stars other than our own. NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope alone was responsible for finding over 2,000. It did so by watching the stars in a patch of the sky for weeks, months or even years at a time. When a planet that goes around one of these stars crosses against the face of its star, it casts a small but definite shadow in the starlight. These shadows are recorded and can be used to calculate the size of the planet. The larger the planet, the more light it blocks.

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