A study conducted by more than 200 researchers including Lousiana State University astronomer Tabetha Boyajian has ruled out the possibility of KIC 8462852 being obscured by an alien megastructure as the cause of its fluctuating brightness.
In a report by Phys.org, Joel Ranck of the Pennsylvania State University, the KIC 8462852, which Boyajian refers to as "the most mysterious star in the world," has been intensively studied from a dedicated telescope at Las Cumbres Observatory in Goleta, California in a span of more than eighteen months from March 2016 to December 2017. The team has dismissed the possibility of an alien megastructure obscuring the star as the cause of its mysterious flickering.
According to Boyajian, the the star's light appears to dim and brighten because of dust passing between the star and the observing telescopes. This was backed up by the varying wavelengths of light that are "blocked at different intensities." Boyajian concludes that whatever is passing between the telescope and the star is not opaque, as what should be expected from an alien megastructure.
Pennsylvania State University assistant professor Jason Wright adds that the researchers discovered that the star becomes much dimmer at certain wavelenghts compared to others.
"We were hoping that once we finally caught a dip happening in real time we could see if the dips were the same depth at all wavelengths," Wright stated. "If they were nearly the same, this would suggest that the cause was something opaque, like an orbiting disk, planet, or star, or even large structures in space."
The study in the Las Cumbres Observatory was made possible by over $100,000 in donations to purchase the needed resources to study KIC 8462852. The star is located over 1,200 light years away from Earth, roughly 1,000 degrees hotter than the sun, and is 50 percent bigger. It was first announced in 2015 when its peculiar dimming effect was seen through a Kepler Telescope.
