JOE T. COXWELL --- Science Fiction Author & Astronomical Artist
Original Science Fiction and Space/Astronomical Art
Member Mississippi Writers Guild
Space News and Features
  • Home
    • Joe T. Coxwell -- A Brief Biography
    • Coxwell's Blog
    • Author Sci-Fi Recommendations
    • Author Interview with Sleepytown Press
  • FREE Story Teasers
    • Epsilon Wish Teaser
    • Third Contact Teaser
  • Purchase Book
    • Order On-line from Amazon.com and Others
    • Order a Kindle Download from Amazon.com
    • Order from the Author by Mail
  • Space News
    • Extraterrestrial Life Search >
      • ​Extraterrestrial Life Could Be Purple
      • ​Alien Life Could Thrive on 'Supercritical' CO2 Instead of Water
      • Alien Megastructure -- "Tabby's Star" -- KIC 8462852 >
        • ​Kepler's 'Alien Megastructure' Star Just Got Weirder
        • ​'Alien Megastructure' Star Keeps Getting Stranger
        • 'Alien Megastructure' Star Is at It Again with the Strange Dimming
      • Humans Will Hear from Intelligent Aliens This Century, Physicist Says
      • ​Could Methane on Saturn's Moon Enceladus Be a Sign of Life?
      • Superflare Blasts Proxima b, the Nearest Exoplanet, ​Dimming Hopes of Life
    • Exoplanets >
      • The Largest Alien Planet of TRAPPIST-1 Has an Atmosphere That Evolved Over Eons
      • First Exomoon Found? Neptune-Sized World Possibly Spotted Orbiting Alien Planet
      • ​Ringed, Rocky Alien Planets May Hide in Plain Sight
      • Kepler Space Telescope Discovers ​95 More Alien Planets
      • ​The Alien Planets of TRAPPIST-1 May Be Too Wet for Life
      • ​Exoplanets: Worlds Beyond Our Solar System
      • Current Potentially Habitable Exoplanets
      • That's No Moon? Proposed Exomoon Defies Formation Theories
      • KOI-500: A Crowded Little Solar System
      • Super-Earth HD 40307g in its Habitable Zone
      • New Earth-mass Planet Found in Nearby Alpha Centauri System
      • Super-Earth 55 Cancri e: Not So Earthlike
      • Newfound Alien Planet a Top Contender to Host Life
      • Planets in Multiple Star Systems -- Is Tatooine for Real?
      • Miniature Solar System Discovered
      • A Periodic Table of Exoplanets
      • Known Types of Alien Planets
      • How Planets in Alien Solar Systems Stack Up
      • Earth-sized Planets Discovered
      • Alien Planet HD 85512 b Holds Possibility of Life
    • Mars Exploration >
      • ​'Mars Ain't Gonna Be Easy': What Apollo 17 Leaders Are Saying About Future Space Exploration
      • The Curiosity Rover Just Drilled into a Rock on Mars for 1st Time Since 2016
      • Curiosity Mars Rover -- Image Gallery
      • Humans on Mars By 2039 -- The Long Delay is Mostly Lack of Political Will
      • Invasion of Mars: Landings and Crashes
    • US Space Program >
      • Pluto's Biggest Moon Could Give an Orbiter an (Almost) Free Ride
      • New Horizons Pluto Photo Gallery >
        • Pluto May Have a Gooey Carbon Layer Beneath Its Crust
      • Space Launch System: NASA's Giant Rocket Explained
      • NASA's New Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle
    • Private Spaceflight Developments >
      • SpaceX's Dragon Capsule & Falcon-9 Booster
      • SpaceX Nails the Barge Landing!
      • Boeing's CST-100 Spacecraft
      • Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser Spaceplane
      • Blue Origins >
        • Blue Origin's New Glenn Booster
    • The Solar System >
      • The Sun
      • Mercury
      • Venus >
        • NASA Wants to Send Humans to Venus, to Live in Airships Floating on Clouds
      • Earth's Moon
      • Mars
      • Asteroids / Vesta / Ceres >
        • Asteroid Sampling MIssion
      • Jupiter
      • Saturn / Titan
      • Uranus
      • Neptune
      • Pluto / Eris / Kuiper Belt Objects
  • Space Art & More
    • New or Recent Artwork
    • Space Art Gallery
    • Space Art Slideshow
  • Links & Contact Info
    • Author Contact
    • Links

​'Alien Megastructure' Star Keeps Getting Stranger

By Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer | October 5, 2016 07:00am ET
 
      The more scientists learn about "Tabby's Star," the more mysterious the bizarre object gets.

      Newly analyzed observations by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope show that the star KIC 8462852 — whose occasional, dramatic dips in brightness still have astronomers scratching their heads — has also dimmed overall during the last few years.  "The steady brightness change in KIC 8462852 is pretty astounding," study lead authorBen Montet, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said in a statement.
 
      "Our highly accurate measurements over four years demonstrate that the star really is getting fainter with time," Montet added. "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."
KIC 8462852 hit the headlines last September, when a team of astronomers led by Tabetha Boyajian of Yale University announced that the star had dimmed dramatically several times over the past few years — in one case, by a whopping 22 percent.
These brightness dips are too significant to be caused by an orbiting planet, so scientists began suggesting alternative explanations. Perhaps a planet or a family of orbiting comets broke up, for example, and the ensuing cloud of dust and fragments periodically blocks the star's light. Or maybe some unknown object in the depths of space between the star and Earth is causing the dimming.
The brightness dips are even consistent with a gigantic energy-collecting structure built by an intelligent civilization — though researchers have been keen to stress that this "alien megastructure" scenario is quite unlikely.
 
      The weirdness increased in January 2016, when astronomer Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University reported that KIC 8462852 also seems to have dimmed overall by 14 percent between 1890 and 1989.   This conclusion is based on Schaefer's analysis of photographic plates of the night sky that managed to capture Tabby's Star, which lies about 1,500 light-years from Earth. Some other astronomers questioned this interpretation, however, suggesting that differences in the instruments used to photograph the sky over that time span may be responsible for the apparent long-term dimming.   So Montet and co-author Joshua Simon, of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, decided to scour the Kepler data for any hint of the trend Schaefer spotted. And they found more than just a hint.
 
      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.)
"This star was already completely unique because of its sporadic dimming episodes," Simon said in the same statement. "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."   Montet and Simon said they don't know what's behind the weird behavior of Tabby's Star, but they hope their results, which have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, help crack the case eventually.
 
      "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," Montet said. "But these observations will provide an important clue to solving the mystery of KIC 8462852."
 
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom,Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.