Astronomy Boyajian's Star is acting up again

[darth_timon]

http://www.space.com/36925-alien-megastructure-star-dimming-again.html

To quote:

The perplexing cosmic object known as "Boyajian's star" is once again exhibiting a mysterious pattern of dimming and brightening that scientists have tried to explain with hypotheses ranging from swarms of comets to alien megastructures.

Today (May 19), an urgent call went out to scientists around the world to turn as many telescopes as possible toward the star, to try and crack the mystery of its behavior.


"At about 4 a.m. this morning I got a phone call … that Fairborn [Observatory] in Arizona had confirmed that the star was 3 percent dimmer than it normally is," Jason Wright, an associate professor of astronomy at Pennsylvania State University, who is managing a study of Boyajian's star, said during a live webcast today at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT). "That is enough that we are absolutely confident that this is no statistical fluke. We've now got it confirmed at multiple observatories, I think."

Pretty weird. The planet breaking up idea is intriguing, but I'm not sure there's enough mass - even for a Jupiter-sized world - to block a star's light like that.

 

[Howard Littlejohn]

The irregular pattern seems to rule out things like a planet or a burned out binary partner (brown dwarf or similar) passing in front.

I know nothing about planetary break-ups, but would have expected some regularity in the pattern, after all the bits are presumably in orbit. I guess it depends on how it broke up. Smashed into another planet could cause chaos.

 

[Thrawn]

Latest update on the findings.

He's got some really interesting space stuff on his channel, well narrated.