The amazing star of our galaxy KIC8462852 turned out to be even stranger than previously thought. Astronomers have discovered changes in it that have never been observed before.
Megastructure of aliens
As a reminder, last year there were reports that this star is experiencing a dramatic and rapid change in brightness. This led to a rather wild speculation that the star is surrounded by an alien megastructure. New observations showed that aliens should not be blamed for everything, but the mystery deepened even more, as historical data show that this star has already lost its brightness by 14%, acquiring an inexplicable gray color just over a hundred years ago.
Observations of American Scientists
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Researchers Josh Simon and Ben Montet, using observations from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, found that KIC8462852 slowly lost its brightness and then returned again over four years of research.
“These high-precision measurements over 4 years show that the star actually loses its brightness over time,” said B. Montet of the California Institute of Technology in a statement. This is an unprecedented case where a star of this type has slowly disappeared over many years. Previously, scientists could not observe anything like this.
This study was previously reported in August, and now its results have been published in the journal Astrophysics. In their study, the scientists compared KIC8462852 with 500 similar stars, which were also observed using Kepler. Despite the fact that a small proportion of the stars also dimmed over time, none of these episodes were as active.
Strange behavior of the star
KIC8462852, also known as Tabby's star, lost about 1% brightness during the first three years of the study, and then suddenly lost another 2%. She then remained stable for the next six months.
This star is absolutely unique due to its sporadic eclipse episodes. However, scientists have now seen that it has other oddities that exceed a slow eclipse for three years and then a sudden loss of brightness.
The six months of blackout in 2012 could be attributed to the decay of a comet or planet, but it is clear that the long-term fade must have some other cause. And scientists still don't know what caused the sharp drop in brightness that was reported last year.
Now scientists are faced with an important task: to find a good explanation of why the star behaves so strangely, because this has never been observed before. Nevertheless, the observations of scientists obtained with the help of Kepler provide an important clue to the mystery of KIC8462852.
Anna Pismenna