In the fall of 2015, there was a lot of buzz around a star that’s located some 1,000 light-years away from us. Seemingly ordinary KIC 8462852 also known as Tabby’s Star had displayed some strange and dramatic dips in brightness.
There was plenty of speculation after astronomers announced this star and its up-and-down light patterns.
One possibility was that the distortions were caused by a megastructure that was built around the star, like a Dyson sphere. The idea is that a Dyson sphere would possibly be constructed by an advanced civilization to collect the energy emitted by a star. One of the speculative theories was that someone built this sort of megastructure around Tabby’s Star, which would explain the intermittent light signatures from that star.
Could this be the answer?
Scientists still haven’t fully explained the brightness dips for Tabby’s Star, although they believe dust plays a role. Now, astronomers have noticed another weirdly dimming object – labeled TIC 400799224 – that’s also undergoing unusual brightness dips, possibly also caused (at least in part) by dust.
Astronomers believe this object is probably a binary star system. They see the system changing in brightness regularly, nearly every 20 Earth-days. They believe the system is edge-on to us, so that we see one star cover the other that often. But there’s also something in the system that’s apparently belching out clouds of dust that also cover the star. But the dust occultations of the star are erratic in their shapes, depths, and durations. They’re detectable (at least from the ground) only about a third of the time or less.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) planet-hunter gathered the data that revealed this object, which is about 2,300 light-years away. Astronomers announced the finding on December 31, 2021.
Rod is a blogger, writer, filmmaker, photographer, daydreamer who likes to cook. Rod produces and directs the web series, CUPIC: Diary of an Investigator. He is also the editor, producer and administrator of STM Daily News, a part of the TNC Network.
