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 29 2016, 09:11 AM
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#2
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2346 Joined: 7-December 12 Member No.: 6780 |
Since intrinsic causes are considered unikely, as well as large numbers of large comets, but a single unknown cause is supposed in Schaefer's initial paper, I'm wondering whether kind of a Bok globule moving in front of the star, or interacting with the star, could catch the observations. Interaction might cause some detectable wobble, and is less likely due to lack of an infrared signature.
To explain lack of absorption and emission lines, the presumed globule should have been swept free of gas for some reason. So, kind of an almost gas-free Bok globule moving into the line of sight could be a construct explaining the observation. Observation of visually close-by background stars might help to discern this kind of scenarios. |
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Jan 29 2016, 07:37 PM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
A Reddit chat about this phenomenon raised, and summarily rejected, the idea of a Bok globule:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3set...sts_and_planet/ The reasoning given is: "we can constrain the position of the globs to be as far as Jupiter is to our Sun, but likely not much farther." Given the brevity of the response, I'm not sure if all parties understood one another. There is discussion of circumstellar clumps in the Boyajian, et al, paper, but I'm not sure how interstellar clumps are excluded. |
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Jan 29 2016, 09:39 PM
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#4
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
I've found a statement of the problem with an "interstellar" explanation – that the occulting material/objects are located between Tabby's star and Earth. It's posted here:
http://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2015/10/1...heres-the-flux/ "It’s very hard to get an interstellar occulter model to work. In order for the occulter to be physically small, it would have to be much closer to the Solar System than the star. In that case, the parallax from Kepler’s motion around the Sun would enter into things, and you’re back to large mutual velocities, which means short timescales." |
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