One of the biggest astronomical mysteries of last winter was the curious behavior of KIC 8462852, a star whose light dips in brightness in a way that defies current explanation. This odd behavior led to all manner of speculation, from comets to alien megastructures.
The star was discovered by the Kepler Mission and a citizen science group called Planet Hunter, who spotted the mysterious light fluctuations in their search for potential planets. Out of 150,000 stars observed by Kepler, only KIC 8462852 has shown this behavior.
Several theories have been put forward on what could be generating the obscurations: multiple stellar companions, planets with large rings, asteroid belts, and comets. However, what piqued media attention was the suggestion that an alien megastructure was orbiting the star. While we're fairly sure it's not aliens, still the mystery remains.
The relative flux of the stars over four years of observations. If a planet was orbiting the star, the flux would only drop a few percent and reoccur at regular intervals. Boyajian et al.
For this reason, the science team behind the discovery has launched a Kickstarter campaign. They aim to raise enough money to secure observing time on a global network of telescopes in order to produce continuous monitoring of KIC 8462852.
From the Kepler observations, we know that the object – often called the "WTF Star" (after the name of the paper, "Where's the flux?") – has dips in luminosity that happen at random intervals. For this reason, the team plans to keep a constant eye on it and expand its observations to different wavelengths.
All the data will be processed in real time, which will allow the team to quickly jump in with more instruments and hopefully find out what is actually happening around the most mysterious star in the Milky Way.
1