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Tag: Tabby’s star

The Ever More Puzzling, And Intriguing, "Tabby’s Star."

August 8, 2016 / / 0 Comments
Star debris illustration

Did Tabby’s star going through periodic and deep dimmings because of dust and debris clouds that pass edbetween it and the mirror of the Kepler Space Telescope?  That was an earlier explanation for the highly unusual behavior of the star, but new research makes that answer less likely. Artist drawing by NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

Substantial, sun-like stars are not supposed to dim.  They start with gravity and pressure induced nuclear reactions, and then they burn brighter and brighter until they either explode (go supernova) or burn all their fuel and become small, enormously dense, and not very bright “white dwarfs.”

Of course, the transit technique of searching for exoplanets looks precisely for dimmings — of stars caused by the passage of an exoplanet.  But those are tiny reductions in the star’s brightness and short-lived.  So if a star is dimming significantly over a much longer period of time, something unusual is going on.

And that is apparently exactly what is happening with the current poster child for mysterious stars — KIC 8462852 or “Tabby’s star,” named after the Yale University postdoc who, with the help of citizen scientists, discovered it,  Tabetha Boyajian.

First written up last fall, the big news was data from the Kepler Space Telescope showed that the star had experienced two major and dissimilar dips in brightness — a highly unusual and perplexing phenomenon.  The dips appeared much too large to represent the passage of an exoplanet, so explanations tended towards the baroque — a swarm of comets, a vast dust cloud, even an alien megastructure (proposed as a last possible explanation.)  The observation was first identified by citizen planet hunters working with Boyajian, making it an even more compelling finding.

Now the mystery has grown stranger still.  A paper made public last week based on a different kind of Kepler imaging (full-frame imaging) found not two but one enormous dip in the light curve, as well as a surprising and significant dimming the of star over the four year observing period of the space telescope.  The paper has been submitted for publication in American Astronomical Society journals.

Benjamin Montet of Caltech and Joshua Simon of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, analyzed the full-field images taken by Kepler every three months (rather than the hourly images studied by Boyajian et al,) and concluded that something strange was indeed going on.

Their conclusion: “No known or proposed stellar phenomena can fully explain all aspects of the observed light curve.”… Read more

The Still Mysterious "Tabby’s Star"

June 3, 2016 / / 0 Comments
Artist rendering of star xxx, and the unexplain ed objects close to it. KNown as "Tabby's" star

Artist rendering of dusty comets approaching star KIC8462852, an interpretation of the mysterious objects that periodically block out substantial amounts of the star’s light. Known informally as “Tabby’s” star, it was discovered by citizen scientists using Kepler Space Telescope data, and they are looking for ways to continue their work. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)

It’s been eight months since citizen “Planet Hunters”  working with Yale postdoc Tabetha Boyajian announced the discovery of a most unusual star, or rather a star where something most unusual was intermittently and erratically happening.

The puzzle began with some light curve data, taken over a four year period, by the Kepler Space Telescope  The citizen planet hunters pored through reams of data sent back by Kepler looking for signals of planetary transits — the ever-so-slight dimmings of the star caused by the crossing or an orbiting exoplanet.

But the light curve for KIC 8462852 showed dimmings that were anything but slight, and anything but regular.  The Planet Hunters flagged the star for Boyajian’s groups attention, and the mystery star was born.

Theories on what was causing the very large dips ranged from a host of enormous comets, to a violently exploding planet, to an asteroid belt or the presence of close by stars, from an artifact of Kepler’s camera to, finally, an alien megastructure.  (The last was offered by Penn State astronomer Jason Wright as a kind of “Hail Mary” explanation if and when the others are found wanting.  But that’s what got the press.)

Despite years of concerted observing, theorizing and analyzing, Boyajian, Wright the citizen planet hunters and others intrigued by the mystery say they are no closer to an explanation for whatever is passing in front of the star (now informally called “Tabby’s star.”)  NASA has ruled out a technical glitch in the Kepler data, and a range of astronomers have found fault with all the explanations put forward.

But while the quite tantalizing mystery remains, efforts to learn more about the star may have to wind down soon.  The primary Kepler mission is over, so it will provide no more data for this star.  Other space telescopes will not be looking, nor will the major ground-based observatories.  And  the first SETI searches for signals coming from the star has found nothing unusual.

So with options dwindling to learn more, Boyajian, her citizen astronomers and others have begun a grassroots effort to raise $100,000 to buy time at a network of smaller ground-based telescopes around the world.… Read more

Shredding Exoplanets, And The Mysteries They May Unravel

February 15, 2016 / / 0 Comments
In this artist’s conception, a tiny rocky object vaporizes as it orbits a white dwarf star. Astronomers have detected the first planetary object transiting a white dwarf using data from the K2 mission. Slowly the object will disintegrate, leaving a dusting of metals on the surface of the star. (NASA)

In this artist’s conception, a small planet or planetesimal vaporizes as it orbits close to a white dwarf star. The detection of several of these disintegrating planets around a variety of stars has led some astronomers to propose intensive study of their ensuing dust clouds as a surprising new way to learn about the interiors of  exoplanet.  (NASA)

One of the seemingly quixotic goals of exoplanet scientists is to understand the chemical and geo-chemical compositions of the interiors of the distant planets they are finding.   Learning whether a planet is largely made up of silicon or magnesium or iron-based compounds is essential to some day determining how and where specific exoplanets were formed in their solar systems, which ones might have the compounds and minerals believed to be necessary for  life, and ultimately which might actually be hosting life.

Studying exoplanet interiors is a daunting challenge for sure, maybe even more difficult in principle than understanding the compositions of exoplanet atmospheres.  After all, there’s still a lot we don’t know about the make-up of planet interiors in our own solar system.

An intriguing pathway, however, has been proposed based on the recent discovery of exoplanets in the process of being shredded.  Generally orbiting very close to their suns, they appear to be disintegrating due to intense radiation and the forces of gravity.

And the result of their coming apart is that their interiors, or at least the dust clouds from their crusts and mantles, may well be on display and potentially measurable.

“We know very little for sure about these disintegrating planets, but they certainly seem to offer a real opportunity,” said Jason Wright, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University with a specialty in stellar astrophysics.  No intensive study of the dusty innards of a distant, falling-apart exoplanet has been done so far,  he said, but in theory at least it seems to be possible.

Artist’s impression of disintegrating exoplanet KIC 12255 (C.U Keller, Leiden University)

Artist’s impression of disintegrating exoplanet KIC 12557548, the first of its kind ever detected. (C.U Keller, Leiden University)

And if successful, the approach could prove broadly useful since astronomers have already found at least four of disintegrating planets and predict that there are many more out there.  The prediction is based on, among other things, the relative speed with which the planets fall apart.  Since the disintegration has been determined to take only tens of thousands to a million years (a very short time in astronomical terms) then scientists conclude that the shreddings must be pretty common  –based on the number already caught in the act.… Read more

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