Scientists have found a new luminary, the brightness of which changes in an unusual way. The most famous such object is the so-called "Tabby Star", the behavior of which astronomers have explained with a variety of hypotheses, up to the astro-engineering structures of aliens. The results are published on the arXiv.org preprint server.
Kepler Space Observatory, created to search for exoplanets, detected unusual fluctuations in brightness of the star KIC 8462852, which is better known as "Tabby's Star" - after one of the discoverers, Tabitha Boyajian. This star is larger and hotter than the Sun, but first of all it is interesting because its radiation changed in a mysterious way: it dimmed and flared up without any regularity. Scientists have proposed many reasons that could explain this phenomenon, including, for example, the megastructure of aliens revolving around it, huge clouds of dust and huge swarms of comets.
In the new work, astronomers write about another star called VVV-WIT-07, the brightness of which also fluctuates strangely. Observations that were conducted from 2010 to 2018 did not reveal any regularities in the brightness changes, however, it sometimes decreased by 80%, while Tabby's Star dims only up to 20%, which, however, is also a lot for similar shone.
There is another star with unusual brightness variations - J1407, which is also called the "Mamajack Object" after the discoverer Eric Mamajack. In 2012, it turned out that the brightness of this object decreases by 95%, but these changes show a periodic pattern, which made it possible to explain them by the presence of a satellite - a large planet or a brown dwarf - with an incredibly extensive system of rings, hundreds of times larger than that of Saturn.
The discovery of several stars with unusual brightness changes may indicate that they are relatively common. However, some astronomers question the true similarity between VVV-WIT-07 and KIC 8462852. The fact is that Tabby's Star is old enough and should not be active, while VVV-WIT-07 is young, and therefore large changes in brightness can be associated with its internal processes. Also on the line of sight to VVV-WIT-07 there is significantly more galactic dust, which also introduces significant distortions in the light. The authors of the new work hope to obtain the observational time on large telescopes in order to obtain much more detailed information about the radiation of this object.