Astronomers have begun raising money for continuous monitoring of the star KIC 8462852, the debate about the possible existence of alien megastructures around which has not subsided since October 2015. Popular Science reports on the new crowdfunding project.
The star KIC 8462852 (Cygnus constellation) is interesting in that its luminosity changes by 22 percent with strict periodicity. As an explanation for this phenomenon, a number of scientists suggested that it could be surrounded by the Dyson sphere, which was created by an alien civilization living in its vicinity. Another point of view suggests that KIC 8462852 is surrounded by a cloud of many comets and asteroids.
In recent months, KIC 8462852 could only be seen in the sky during the daytime, which made it impossible to track it from ground-based telescopes. However, now it is already possible to see it at night - for this, astronomer Tabby Boyajian is going to find financial resources.
The money will be used to buy telescopes working hours. While the Boyajian group has agreed with the private network of telescopes LCOGT for 200 free hours - this will be enough until the end of the summer (two hours of observations every night). Next, astronomers hope to pay off with the money raised through Kickstarter.
Continuous monitoring will allow to quickly record a new drop in the luminosity of KIC 8462852. Then Boyajian will contact astronomers around the world, and they will send their telescopes to the star - a lot of collected data, scientists hope, will help explain the mysterious phenomenon.
The binary star KIC 8462852 is located 1,480 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. The mass and radius of its largest star is about 1.5 times greater than that of the Sun. The companion of a large star is three times lighter than a large one and is located at a distance of 885 astronomical units from it.