Approximately 1500 light-years from us, near one of the stars of the constellation Cygnus there is a mysterious object that has not ceased to torment the inquisitive minds of astronomers for more than one year in a row. First of all, scientists were interested in the potential size and shape of an object located near the star KIC 8462852 (also known as the star of Tabby), which caused many disputes, assumptions and theories. At some point, experts even made a bold assumption that this object is some kind of alien megastructure.
Most astronomers, nevertheless, are skeptical about all this kind of talk, but the controversy surrounding this star and in particular the unknown nature of the object attracted even the Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations (SETI) Institute, which set itself the task of finding out once and for all the mystery of the star Tabby.
A scientific group from the University of California at Berkeley, involved in a 10-year initiative program to search for extraterrestrial civilizations, for which was allocated 100 million dollars, decided to join the work.
“The Breakthrough Listen program is about using the most powerful SETI equipment on the planet and gaining access to the largest telescopes on Earth,” said Dr. Andrew Simion, director of the SETI Research Center at Berkeley and co-founder of the Breakthrough Listen project.
"We will have access to the most sensitive equipment at the moment and, unlike any other similar experiments conducted, we will be able to study a wider type of signals."
Over the next two months, astronomers plan to conduct three eight-hour continuous observations of the star Tabby using the power of the Green Bank radio telescope of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, located in West Virginia (USA). Green Bank is the world's largest full-circle parabolic telescope and the most sensitive telescope for searching for stars. The telescope's instruments are connected to a giant dish that allows astronomers to listen to billions of different radio signals at once and collect hundreds of gigabytes of data per day. This will be the most ambitious project to study a particular single star.
Tabby's star in infrared and ultraviolet spectra
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“Any astronomer with access to the capabilities of such a telescope is simply obliged to use it to look at the star Tabby,” says Simion.
“They looked at it with the help of the Hubble, looked at it with the telescopes of the Keck Observatory, followed it with the help of various radio and infrared telescopes. In general, using every means imaginable, including all SETI equipment. But we haven't found anything yet."
It will take scientists another month to sift through all the signals received from the star. Even so, the Berkeley team may need the help of other scientists to parse and analyze the data.
NIKOLAY KHIZHNYAK