Hoping our favorite star returns with a big dip later this month! Boyajian's Star (AKA Tabby's Star and KIC 8462852) was labelled the galaxy's most mysterious star due to its short and very deep dips/dimming. More: https://t.co/kXMQ39fvIo
@tsboyajian@Astro_Wright
@danaunseen To quote Carl Sagan, "The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space." Naive to assume such a thing, actually.
Today might have seen the biggest physics discovery of my lifetime. I don't think people fully grasp the implications of an ambient temperature / pressure superconductor. Here's how it could totally change our lives.
@JasonPostier@latestinspace Simplest way is by measuring age. Isotope declay can tell us if material is about the age of our solar system formation. In this case, preliminary results show its OLDER than our solar system.
@dablokestweet@latestinspace@johnttaylor Avi Loeb, the Harvard prof. that recovered the melted fragments isnt ruling out that it would have been artifically constructed (ie alien tech)- not just interstellar rocks. It had Iron, but didnt have Nickel. That doesnt make a lot of sense since Iron is formed out of Nickel.
@echoesofBob@latestinspace No. Think missile defense / sensors. It was space command that first confirmed the velocity of the meteor, which btw was faster than 95% of all the stars in our galaxy. Moving so fast its not possible to be gravitational bound to Earths sun.
@MickWest Perhaps the nearby universe looks empty because it is, or perhaps its not empty. Perhaps 'they' are watching, but probably not. Yep, you've covered all possibilities. Well done.
@Oswald1160@MvonRen@MickWest They do rotate by design. But it clearly isnt rotating no where near the degree to which the object does (compare horizon / cloud deck to object). Obviously.
@tsboyajian@Astro_Wright Boyajian's star is now so close to the horizon, ground based observations are limited (if at all). But, its been an interesting few months. There were 4 predicted dips this year which I have marked on the graph (3 of which are clear hits).
@tsboyajian@Astro_Wright#KIC8462852 / Boyajian's Star appears to be recovering from the latest dip. This slow recovery is exactly what we saw 4.3 and 8.6 years ago (suggesting a 1574 day orbit).
https://t.co/a4xm16iCVP
@Blevins2020 Theres TESS, Spitzer, JWST...but theres spotty coverage from space. That said, this is a tweet, not a paper. Theres more data and analysis to come.
Here Ive taken Keplers (KST) 2013 observations and adjusted their Julian date by 1574.4 x 2 days, and then overlaid it with the 2021 LCO lc. Nice fit!
We saw the same fit to KST lc (+1574.4 x 1) to LCO 2017 lc. Again, nice fit. We have an orbit at 2.9 AU!
@Blevins2020 LCO present day results are blue dots (b band) and red triangles (i band). Grey small dots are Kepler 2013. In our paper from 3 years ago, we compared Kepler 2013 to LCO 2017. Another match. Conclusion is we have a 1574 day orbit.
https://t.co/E8D5o2cp4p