KIC 8462852 Observations |
KIC 8462852 Observations |
Oct 15 2015, 04:45 PM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
Kepler found one very, very strange case:
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive...-galaxy/410023/ In a nutshell, while Kepler was observing it, the star (larger and brighter than the Sun) exhibited four dimming events that took place at irregular intervals, blocked a lot more light than a Jupiter-sized planet would block, and had a "shape" that varied in all four cases and did not resemble a planet. This case is attracting some wild speculation… in fact, it is seemingly certain that something wild must be going on; it's just a matter of which wild scenario is the correct one. If I had to throw my hat in the ring, I'd guess that a distant collision and breakup has placed big swarms of matter into a very long-period orbit. But there's no hypothesis that's been offered that doesn't seem problematic. |
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Jan 16 2016, 06:39 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 723 Joined: 13-June 04 Member No.: 82 |
Okay, I've decided to download the full archive of Harvard Observatory observations of this object. I went to the DASCH Lightcurve Access page, and entered the object's coordinates: 20 06 15.457 +44 27 24.61 and got a text file that I converted to a spreadsheet file (which I tried to upload to this post, but it was not allowed).
I extracted the magnitude measurements with an RMS equal to or less than 0.2 (1265 data points) and created a chart with a second-order polynomial trend line: There is a definite decline of about 0.2 magnitude (the trend line appears to underestimate this), but it also appears relatively flat from 1890 to 1953, and when observations resume in the late 1960s, the average brightness appears to be well below the earlier values and steadily declining. |
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Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 14th June 2024 - 02:20 PM |
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