Mysterious 'alien megastructure' star starts dimming again, leaves astronomers baffled - Watch video

Astronomers are baffled as the most mysterious 'alien megastructure' star in the Universe just kicked into action again with its light dimming in bizarre ways.

Image credit: NASA

New Delhi: Astronomers are baffled as a mysterious 'alien megastructure' star in the Universe just kicked into action again with its light dimming in bizarre ways.

Astronomers have proposed many theories to to explain strange irregularities in the brightness of 'alien megastructure' star, with one speculation being that the changes in brightness could be a sign of activity associated with intelligent extraterrestrial life constructing a Dyson swarm.

The SETI Institute's initial radio reconnaissance of the star, however, found no evidence of technology-related radio signals from the star.

The 'alien megastructure' star also known as Tabby's Star was discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. It is located about 1,500 light-years away, between the Cygnus and Lyra constellations of the Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers have observed that the star dimmed by up to 22 percent before returning to normal at the time it was discovered showing the mysterious changes in 2015.

ALERT:@tsboyajian's star is dipping

This is not a drill.

Astro tweeps on telescopes in the next 48 hours: spectra please! — Jason Wright (@Astro_Wright) May 19, 2017

Soon, Tabetha Boyajian, lead researcher of the team that observed the celestial body in 2015, also tweeted about the dimming:

#TabbysStar IS DIPPING! OBSERVE!! @NASAKepler @LCO_Global @keckobservatory @AAVSO @nexssinfo @NASA @NASAHubble @Astro_Wright @BerkeleySETI — Tabetha Boyajian (@tsboyajian) May 19, 2017

Jason Wright, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, had broken the news on Twitter, urging amateur and professional astronomers to point their telescopes towards Tabby’s star and to provide spectra results for further analysis.

During a live webcast later, Jason Wright had said, “At about 4 a.m. this morning I got a phone call … that Fairborn [Observatory] in Arizona had confirmed that the star was three percent dimmer than it normally is. That is enough that we are absolutely confident that this is no statistical fluke. We’ve now got it confirmed at multiple observatories, I think.”

“Whatever’s causing the star to get dimmer will leave a spectral fingerprint behind,” Wright said during the webcast.

“So if there is a lot of dust between us and the star… it will block more blue light than red light. If there is gas in that dust, that gas should absorb very specific wavelengths and we should be able to see that. And so, we’ve been eager to see one of these changes in one of these dips of the star so we can take some spectra,” he said.

It’s difficult to predict when and how long a dimming event would occur, which is why astronomers make it a point to schedule professional-grade telescope observations weeks or months in advance.

“We need to have a network of people around the world that are ready to jump on (and observe it),” Wright had said.

“Fortunately, Tabby’s star is not too faint and so there are a lot of observers and telescopes … that have graciously agreed to take some time out of their science to grab a spectrum for us,” as was reported by the Inquistr.

The behavior of the star is indeed baffling and there is no established explanation to the irregularities it so often displays, yet.

Below is the archived live stream with Jason Wright:

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(Video courtesy: BerkeleySETI)