Mysterious star in the Milky Way is more strange than thought – lagranepoca

artistic Drawing of a mysterious star in the Milky Way. (NASA/JPL)

The star KIC 8462852 of the Constellation The Swan caused a sensation in the year 2015, decrease your brightness in unexpected ways. No one knew what was happening. Josh Simon of the University of Carnegie and Ben Montet of the Institute Caltech, analyzed images and data from past years and discovered that his previous light had been slowly weakening. This adds a new mystery about what may be the cause.

A strange-looking, that is possibly related, is that the star is surrounded by a group of unusual comets, but these fail to explain the long-term weakening.

"In general, stars can apparently darken due to a solid object like a planet or a cloud of dust and gas is passing between it and the observer, obscuring and getting dark in an effective manner its luster for a time. But the pattern is erratic for the abrupt loss of strength and re-brightness of the KIC 8462852 is different to that observed in any other star," noted by astronomers, in a report of Carnegie on October 3.

measurements of the star dating from the NINETEENTH century, and was estimating that it would have decreased its brightness by 14 per cent between 1890 and 1989, what many wanted to confirm.

Simon and Montet analyzed four years of records of images and data from the telescope Kepler, NASA. This confirmed the slow fading before the events most unusual of 2015.

The first three years of records showed that the star of The Swan, decreased its brightness by one percent. Then unexpectedly eased two percent in only six months. Then it remained stable.

The researchers compared what happened to the KIC 8462852 with other 500-like stars and found that a small amount suffered the same attenuation of the initial brightness, in the same period of the first three years.

"however, none showed an attenuation (rear) so dramatically in only six months, or a total change in the brightness of a 3 per cent," the report says.

"Our measurements of high precision for more than four years demonstrate that the star really is becoming more and more weak with time. Is not unprecedented for this type of star to vanish slowly over the years, and we don’t see anything like that in the data of Kepler".

In his analysis, Simon and Montet explained that if the star suffered a shock of a planet or a comet, it could leave a cloud of dust that blocked his own light, but this fact only to explain the change of brightness unexpected, and not the attenuation in the long term.

"This does not explain the attenuation of the long-term during the first three years observed by Kepler and the one suggested by the measurements of the star dating back to the NINETEENTH century," concluded the science team of Carnegie and Caltech.

Simply "the mystery deepened".