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 27 2016, 08:47 PM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1585 Joined: 14-October 05 From: Vermont Member No.: 530 |
I have been thinking a lot about the geometry and the rotation rate's signature in the light curve. Perhaps we're seeing a pole in the earth-facing hemisphere, and we're seeing a polar hood form and dissipate, with just part of the hood rotating out of view, to give the big dip some brighter shoulders. I think along these lines because crazy stuff like enormous starspots or metal clouds would show that 0.88 day rotation.
Polar phenomena like aurorae-- who knows what would cause a very transient one on a star? Not me. But it's interesting to think about, and do you call that endogenous if the trigger is exogenous, like on earth? |
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Jan 28 2016, 08:08 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
stevesliva, I like your idea, although I don't know if there's any precedent for a star producing a hood that dims its brightness; yet, we must come back to the fact that whatever is happening is by definition very unusual.
If an endogenous cause is at work, it would either show a component of the 0.88-day period or be changing on a scale considerably faster than that. It's interesting to consider the possible connectedness of the four dips: What happened at day 792 resembles a single transit by one very large planet, although it is problematically large. Maybe it has a ring system, or maybe the derived parameters are erroneous. If it is a planet, it's almost certainly a big giant. What happened at days 1510-1570 may be entirely unrelated to the day-792 event, something strange (like the comet swarm). Or, it may be a second pass by the object from day 792, with something catastrophic having happened in the meantime. This is a testable hypothesis: If such an object does exist, we know exactly when to look for more transits. Investigating that possibility is a must. |
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