Star Emitting Extremely Unusual Light Patterns

[Siz]

You know what? I need a more reliable source, so I'll just wait for Ihateyoumike's final report.

*like*

[Magdalena]

Speaking of Star Emitting Extremely Unusual Light Patterns, and "The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy" Does anyone know what happened to Ihateyoumike?
Just want to know, don't want to derail. 

[Recusant]

Speaking of Star Emitting Extremely Unusual Light Patterns, and "The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy" Does anyone know what happened to Ihateyoumike?
Just want to know, don't want to derail. 

I don't know, but his brother hismikeness has logged in (though didn't post anything) since Asmodean Prime revived HAF, so at least one of them is still around. I miss both of them here--they are good company.

[Magdalena]

Thanks, Recusant. I can always count on you when I need answers.

[Recusant]

Sorry it wasn't much of an answer--more of a "yeah, me too." 

[Magdalena]

I know...

[Recusant]

Back to updating the KIC 8462852 (apparently informally known as "Tabby's Star") story:

"Comet fragments best explanation of mysterious dimming star" | Astronomy Now

This illustration shows a star behind a shattered comet. Observations of the star KIC 8462852 by NASA's Kepler and Spitzer space telescopes suggest that its unusual light signals are likely from dusty comet fragments, which blocked the light of the star as they passed in front of it in 2011 and 2013. The comets are thought to be travelling around the star in a very long, eccentric orbit.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

[Massimo Marengo, an Iowa State University associate professor of physics and astronomy] and two other astronomers decided to take a close look at the star using data taken with the Infrared Array Camera of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. They report their findings in a paper recently published online by The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

"The scenario in which the dimming in the KIC 8462852 light curve were caused by the destruction of a family of comets remains the preferred explanation," wrote the three — Marengo; Alan Hulsebus, an Iowa State doctoral student; and Sarah Willis, a former Iowa State graduate student now with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory.

[Continues . . .]

The abstract of the paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters:

We analyzed the warm Spitzer/IRAC data of KIC 8462852. We found no evidence of infrared excess at 3.6 μm and a small excess of 0.43 ± 0.18 mJy at 4.5 μm below the 3σ threshold necessary to claim a detection. The lack of strong infrared excess 2 years after the events responsible for the unusual light curve observed by Kepler further disfavors the scenarios involving a catastrophic collision in a KIC 8462852 asteroid belt, a giant impact disrupting a planet in the system or a population of dust-enshrouded planetesimals. The scenario invoking the fragmentation of a family of comets on a highly elliptical orbit is instead consistent with the lack of strong infrared excess found by our analysis.

[Recusant]

There have been observations of a second star that show similar changing light patterns to those seen coming from KIC 8462852. "Researchers just found a second 'Dyson Sphere' star" | ScienceAlert

When astronomers discovered a strange pattern of light near a distant star called KIC 8462852 back in October, it was like nothing anyone had observed before.

When a planet passes in front of star, the star's brightness usually dips by around 1 percent, but KIC 8462852 has been experiencing dips of up to 22 percent, suggesting that something huge is zooming past. And now a second star with strange dips in brightness has been identified.

Named EPIC 204278916, the star is estimated to be about the size of our Sun in diameter, but has only half its mass.

It was discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft in 2014, and ever since, a team of astronomers led by Simone Scaringi from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany have been keeping tabs on its dips in light, or 'light curves'.

And this thing is even stranger than KIC 8462852.

The researchers report that over 78.8 days of observations, EPIC 204278916 displayed irregular dimming of up to 65 percent for around 25 consecutive days.

[Continues . . .]

Oh, and I noticed hismikeness lurking again here on HAF a while back. 

[Asmodean]

I would love it to be alien tech but it's probably just cometary debris. 

Yeah... I expect an advanced civilization has better uses for its star than turning it into a nuclear powered discoball.

[Recusant]

More observations of unusual changes in KIC 8462852:

"Our galaxy's most-mysterious star is even stranger than astronomers thought" ScienceDaily

A star known by the unassuming name of KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus has been raising eyebrows both in and outside of the scientific community for the past year. In 2015 a team of astronomers announced that the star underwent a series of very brief, non-periodic dimming events while it was being monitored by NASA's Kepler space telescope, and no one could quite figure out what caused them. A new study from Carnegie's Josh Simon and Caltech's Ben Montet has deepened the mystery.

[. . .]

"The steady brightness change in KIC 8462852 is pretty astounding," said Montet. "Our highly accurate measurements over four years demonstrate that the star really is getting fainter with time. It is unprecedented for this type of star to slowly fade for years, and we don't see anything else like it in the Kepler data."

"This star was already completely unique because of its sporadic dimming episodes. But now we see that it has other features that are just as strange, both slowly dimming for almost three years and then suddenly getting fainter much more rapidly," Simon added.

[Continues . . .]

[Recusant]

While a good hypothesis for explaining what's going on with KIC 8462852/Tabby's Star has been advanced ("Scientists Think They Can Finally Explain The Weirdness That Is The 'Alien Megastructure' Star") not many people seem to be aware of it.

So in the story below, no mention is made of the somewhat mundane explanation ("an internal phase transition, which is causing powerful outbursts on the surface that are occasionally blocking the light emissions that our telescopes detect") but what it says is of interest to those who've been keeping track of news about KIC 8462852.

"The 'Alien Megastructure' Star Is Dimming Again" | The Atlantic

Astronomers are scurrying to book telescope time to observe, and maybe something further will be learned. 

[Davin]

It's interesting, but I feel like the "mundane" explanation is close to the truth.