KIC 8462852 Tabby's Star

Incredibly interesting Star system discovered by an astronomer on staff at LSU, Tabetha Boyajian.

KIC 8462852

Tabetha S. Boyajian

LSU site

KIC 8462852[1] (also Tabby's Star or Boyajian's Star) is an F-type main-sequence star located in the constellation Cygnus approximately 1,276.6+398.2
-245.3 light-years (391.4+122.1
-75.2 pc) from Earth.[2] Unusual light fluctuations of the star were discovered by citizen scientists as part of the Planet Hunters project, and in September 2015 astronomers and citizen scientists associated with the project posted a preprint of a paper on arXiv describing the data and possible interpretations.[1] The discovery was made from data collected by the Kepler space telescope,[1][6] which observes changes in the brightness of distant stars to detect exoplanets.[7]


The significance of this system is the dips in light detected by the Kepler space telescope shows erratic behavior which instead of smooth, regular dips which indicates the object isn't spherical. Plus the sheer amount of light being blocked out - something on the order of 25% at its peak - is nuts, a Jupiter sized planet would block out roughly 1% of our Suns light.

Given this scientists can't help but admit this could be caused by an advanced civilization around the star, there's very little else that we know of that makes sense.