Tabetha S. Boyajian

Last updated
Tabetha S. Boyajian
TabethaSuzanneBoyajian.jpg
Education
Known forInvestigation of the strange light curve of KIC 8462852
Scientific career
Fields
Thesis Sizing up the Stars  (2009)
Doctoral advisor Harold A. McAlister
Website www.astro.yale.edu/tabetha/Site/Welcome.html

Tabetha "Tabby" Suzanne Boyajian is an American astronomer and associate professor at Louisiana State University. [1] She works in of stellar interferometry, stellar spectroscopy, exoplanet research, and high angular resolution astronomy, all particularly at optical and infrared wavelengths. Boyajian was the lead author of the September 2015 paper "Where's the Flux?", which investigated the highly unusual light curve of KIC 8462852; [2] the star is colloquially known as Tabby's Star in her honor. [3]

Contents

Background

Boyajian graduated from The Galloway School in Atlanta, Georgia. [4] She received a BS degree in Physics with concentration in Astronomy from the College of Charleston in 2003, an MS degree in Physics from Georgia State University in 2005, and a PhD degree in astronomy from the same university in 2009. [5] She studied the sizes of nearby stars similar to the Sun, using GSU's CHARA array, a long-baseline optical and infrared interferometer located at Mount Wilson Observatory. Boyajian was awarded a Hubble Fellowship, and stayed at Georgia State University to study sizes of nearby stars much smaller than the Sun and stars with planets. [6] [7] Astronomer Sarah Ballard described this as "truly remarkable" [8] work and has used what she calls this "precious sample" [8] of data on nearby small stars for the "characterization by proxy" method to help investigate the far more distant exoplanet Kepler-61b. [8] [9]

She was a post-doctoral fellow from 2012–16 at Yale University, working with Debra Fischer. [10]

As of 2015, Boyajian is secretary and steering committee member of Division G Stars and Stellar Physics of the International Astronomical Union. [11]

Boyajian is also manager of the Planet Hunters project in which amateurs analyze data from the Kepler space telescope. [12] She co-wrote the book Extrasolar Planets and Their Host Stars with Kaspar von Braun in 2017 ( von Braun & Boyajian 2017 ).

Tabby's Star

On 14 October 2015, a strange pattern of light from star KIC 8462852, nicknamed "Tabby's Star" after Boyajian – the lead researcher who discovered the irregular light fluctuation – was captured by the Kepler Space Telescope, and raised speculation that a Dyson sphere may have been discovered. [13] [14]

In February 2016, Boyajian gave a TED talk where she explained why she and others thought they had possibly discovered a massive alien structure and speculation on Dyson's Spheres:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it is my job, my responsibility, as an Astronomer to remind people that alien hypotheses should always be a last resort. [15]

Wanting to understand the strange light pattern, Boyajian put several hypotheses to the test. Everyone's[ weasel words ] first thought was an exoplanet detected around this massive star, but the dips in light lasted anywhere from 5 to 80 days and were erratically spaced apart thus ruling out any kind of an orbit for one celestial object. [2] A dust cloud was proposed but the star showed no signs of being young so a dust cloud was highly improbable. Lastly, a comet shower was hypothesized. However, as Boyajian pointed out in her TED talk this was the most likely out of all the hypotheses and yet was still highly improbable.

It would take hundreds of comets to reproduce what we're observing. And these are only the comets that happen to pass between us and the star. And so in reality, we're talking thousands to tens of thousands of comets. [15]

So after all the natural explanations turned up weak, her team decided to send off their research to SETI (Search for extraterrestrial intelligence) to rule out aliens. After reviewing the research the SETI Institute was so intrigued that they decided to study the star themselves and pointed their Allen Telescope Array (ATA) at the star "with hopes of catching a tell-tale signal that might reveal a technological civilization." [16]

The SETI Institute mentioned what caught their eye and made them take on the research themselves: "Even more interesting, the timing of the present dip (in light) suggests that whatever this material is, it is situated at just the right distance from the star to be in the 'habitable zone,' where we believe life like ours could develop as it has on Earth." [16]

Being as skeptical as Boyajian was, she took SETI's approach and allowed herself to have a bit of fun in hypothesizing what the light pattern could have been. In her Ted Talk she joked:

Another idea that's one of my personal favorites is that we had just witnessed an interplanetary space battle and the catastrophic destruction of a planet. Now, I admit that this would produce a lot of dust that we don't observe. But if we're already invoking aliens in this explanation, then who is to say they didn't efficiently clean up all this mess for recycling purposes? [15]

The search for answers to KIC 8462852 is still ongoing, with two papers published in the summer of 2019 offering plausible scientific scenarios, involving larger moons being stripped from their planets. [17] [18] [19]

Publications

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Geoffrey Marcy</span> American astronomer

Geoffrey William Marcy is an American astronomer. He was an early influence in the field of exoplanet detection, discovery, and characterization. Marcy was a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and an adjunct professor of physics and astronomy at San Francisco State University. Marcy and his research teams discovered many extrasolar planets, including 70 out of the first 100 known exoplanets and also the first planetary system around a Sun-like star, Upsilon Andromedae. Marcy was a co-investigator on the NASA Kepler space telescope mission. His collaborators have included R. Paul Butler, Debra Fischer and Steven S. Vogt, Jason Wright, Andrew Howard, Katie Peek, John Johnson, Erik Petigura, Lauren Weiss, Lea Hirsch and the Kepler Science Team. Following an investigation for sexual harassment in 2015, Marcy resigned his position at the University of California, Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exomoon</span> Moon beyond the Solar System

An exomoon or extrasolar moon is a natural satellite that orbits an exoplanet or other non-stellar extrasolar body.

The Kepler Input Catalog is a publicly searchable database of roughly 13.2 million targets used for the Kepler Spectral Classification Program (SCP) and the Kepler space telescope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Discoveries of exoplanets</span> Detecting planets located outside the Solar System

An exoplanet is a planet located outside the Solar System. The first evidence of an exoplanet was noted as early as 1917, but was not recognized as such until 2016; no planet discovery has yet come from that evidence. What turned out to be the first detection of an exoplanet was published among a list of possible candidates in 1988, though not confirmed until 2003. The first confirmed detection came in 1992, with the discovery of terrestrial-mass planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12. The first confirmation of an exoplanet orbiting a main-sequence star was made in 1995, when a giant planet was found in a four-day orbit around the nearby star 51 Pegasi. Some exoplanets have been imaged directly by telescopes, but the vast majority have been detected through indirect methods, such as the transit method and the radial-velocity method. As of 24 July 2024, there are 7,026 confirmed exoplanets in 4,949 planetary systems, with 1007 systems having more than one planet. This is a list of the most notable discoveries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-22b</span> Super-Earth exoplanet orbiting Kepler-22

Kepler-22b is an exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the Sun-like star Kepler-22. It is located about 640 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cygnus. It was discovered by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope in December 2011 and was the first known transiting planet to orbit within the habitable zone of a Sun-like star, where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. Kepler-22 is too dim to be seen with the naked eye.

Kepler-1520 is a K-type main-sequence star located in the constellation Cygnus. The star is particularly important, as measurements taken by the Kepler spacecraft indicate that the variations in the star's light curve cover a range from about 0.2% to 1.3% of the star's light being blocked. This indicates that there may be a rapidly disintegrating planet, a prediction not yet conclusively confirmed, in orbit around the star, losing mass at a rate of 1 Earth mass every billion years. The planet itself is about 0.1 Earth masses, or just twice the mass of Mercury, and is expected to disintegrate in about 100-200 million years. The planet orbits its star in just 15.7 hours, at a distance only two stellar diameters away from the star's surface, and has an estimated effective temperature of about 2255 K. The orbital period of the planet is one of the shortest ever detected in the history of the extrasolar planet search. In 2016, the planet was confirmed as part of a data release by the Kepler spacecraft.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Planet Hunters</span> Citizen science project to find exoplanets

Planet Hunters is a citizen science project to find exoplanets using human eyes. It does this by having users analyze data from the NASA Kepler space telescope and the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It was launched by a team led by Debra Fischer at Yale University, as part of the Zooniverse project.

HD 38858 is a G-type star, much like The Sun, with one detected planet. The planet, designated HD 38858 b, is about twice the mass of Uranus and orbits in the star's habitable zone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exocomet</span> Comet outside the Solar System

An exocomet, or extrasolar comet, is a comet outside the Solar System, which includes rogue comets and comets that orbit stars other than the Sun. The first exocomets were detected in 1987 around Beta Pictoris, a very young A-type main-sequence star. There are now a total of 27 stars around which exocomets have been observed or suspected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PH2</span> Star in the constellation Cygnus

PH2, also known as Kepler-86, or KIC 12735740, is a G-type star 1,120 light-years distant within the constellation Cygnus. Roughly the size and temperature of the Sun, PH2 gained prominence when it was known to be the host of one of 42 planet candidates detected by the Planet Hunters citizen science project in its second data release. The candidate orbiting around PH2, known as PH2b, had been determined to have a spurious detection probability of only 0.08%, thus effectively confirming its existence as a planet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-90h</span> Exoplanet in the constellation Draco

Kepler-90h is an exoplanet orbiting within the habitable zone of the early G-type main sequence star Kepler-90, the outermost of eight such planets discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft. It is located about 2,840 light-years, from Earth in the constellation Draco. The exoplanet was found by using the transit method, in which the dimming effect that a planet causes as it crosses in front of its star is measured.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kepler-438b</span> Super-Earth orbiting Kepler-438

Kepler-438b is a confirmed near-Earth-sized exoplanet. It is likely rocky. It orbits on the inner edge of the habitable zone of a red dwarf, Kepler-438, about 472.9 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. It receives 1.4 times our solar flux. The planet was discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft using the transit method, in which the dimming effect that a planet causes as it crosses in front of its star is measured. NASA announced the confirmation of the exoplanet on 6 January 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Breakthrough Listen</span> Initiative to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life

Breakthrough Listen is a project to search for intelligent extraterrestrial communications in the Universe. With $100 million in funding and thousands of hours of dedicated telescope time on state-of-the-art facilities, it is the most comprehensive search for alien communications to date. The project began in January 2016, and is expected to continue for 10 years. It is a component of Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Initiatives program. The science program for Breakthrough Listen is based at Berkeley SETI Research Center, located in the Astronomy Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tabby's Star</span> Star noted for unusual dimming events

Tabby's Star is a binary star in the constellation Cygnus approximately 1,470 light-years from Earth. The system is composed of an F-type main-sequence star and a red dwarf companion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HD 164595</span> Star in the constellation of Hercules

HD 164595 is a wide binary star system in the northern constellation of Hercules. The primary component of this pair hosts an orbiting exoplanet. The system is located at a distance of 92 light years from the Sun based on parallax measurements, and is drifting further away with a radial velocity of 2.0 km/s. Although it has an absolute magnitude of +4.81, at that distance it is too faint to be viewed with the naked eye, having an apparent visual magnitude of 7.07. The brighter star can be found with binoculars or a small telescope less than a degree to the east-northeast of Xi Herculis. HD 164595 has a relatively large proper motion, traversing the celestial sphere at an angular rate of 0.222″ yr−1.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hereford Arizona Observatory</span> Observatory

Hereford Arizona Observatory (HAO), IAU-code G95, is an astronomical observatory, owned and operated by amateur astronomer Bruce L. Gary. Observational studies of unusual starlight fluctuations in Tabby's Star and WD 1145+017 are recent interests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disrupted planet</span> Planet or related being destroyed by a passing object

In astronomy, a disrupted planet is a planet or exoplanet or, perhaps on a somewhat smaller scale, a planetary-mass object, planetesimal, moon, exomoon or asteroid that has been disrupted or destroyed by a nearby or passing astronomical body or object such as a star. Necroplanetology is the related study of such a process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VVV-WIT-07</span> Star noted for unusual dimming events

VVV-WIT-07 is a unique variable star which presents a sequence of recurrent dimmings with a possible deep eclipse in July 2012. The star, located in the Scorpius constellation about 23,000 ly (7,100 pc) away, is not a binary star, which would eliminate such a system from explaining the various observed dimmings.

Kepler-1708b is a Jupiter-sized exoplanet orbiting the Sun-like star Kepler-1708, located in the constellation of Cygnus approximately 5,600 light years away from Earth. It was first detected in 2011 by NASA's Kepler mission using the transit method, but was not identified as a candidate planet until 2019. In 2021, a candidate Neptune-sized exomoon in orbit around Kepler-1708b was found by astronomer David Kipping and colleagues in an analysis using Kepler transit data. However, subsequent research has raised discrepancies about the possible existence of an exomoon, similar to that of Kepler-1625b.

References

  1. ↑ "Welcome". Yale University. Archived from the original on July 23, 2016.
  2. 1 2 Boyajian, T. S.; LaCourse, D. M.; Rappaport, S. A.; Fabrycky, D.; Fischer, D. A.; Gandolfi, D.; Kennedy, G. M.; Liu, M. C.; Moor, A.; Olah, K.; Vida, K.; Wyatt, M. C.; Best, W. M. J.; Ciesla, F.; Csak, B.; Dupuy, T. J.; Handler, G.; Heng, K.; Korhonen, H.; Kovacs, J.; Kozakis, T.; Kriskovics, L.; Schmitt, J. R.; Szabo, Gy.; Szabo, R.; Wang, J.; Goodman, S.; Hoekstra, A.; Jek, K. J. (September 15, 2015). "Planet Hunters X. KIC 8462852 - Where's the Flux?". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 457 (4): 3988–4004. arXiv: 1509.03622 . Bibcode:2016MNRAS.457.3988B. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stw218 . S2CID   54859232. Submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society .
  3. ↑ Newsome, John (16 October 2015). "Space anomaly gets extraterrestrial intelligence experts' attention". CNN . Retrieved 16 October 2015.
  4. ↑ "GSU astronomy graduate student receives Hubble Fellowship to explore stellar sizes". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2024-02-09.
  5. ↑ CV Dr. Tabetha Suzanne Boyajian - scientific literature digital library CiteSeerX
  6. ↑ "NASA Announces 2009 Astronomy and Astrophysics Fellows" (Press release). Space Telescope Science Institute. February 25, 2009. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
  7. ↑ "GSU astronomy graduate student receives Hubble Fellowship to explore stellar sizes" (Press release). Georgia State University.
  8. 1 2 3 Kelly, Peter (April 25, 2013). "Astronomer studies far-off worlds through 'characterization by proxy'". UW Today. University of Washington. Archived from the original on April 29, 2013. Quoting Sarah Ballard.
  9. ↑ Ballard, Sarah; Charbonneau, David; Fressin, Francois; Torres, Guillermo; Irwin, Jonathan; Desert, Jean-Michel; Newton, Elisabeth; Mann, Andrew W.; Ciardi, David R.; Crepp, Justin R.; Henze, Christopher E.; Bryson, Stephen T.; Howell, Steven B.; Horch, Elliott P.; Everett, Mark E.; Shporer, Avi (April 2013). "Exoplanet Characterization by Proxy: a Transiting 2.15 R_Earth Planet Near the Habitable Zone of the Late K dwarf Kepler-61". Astrophysical Journal. 773 (2): 98. arXiv: 1304.6726 . Bibcode:2013ApJ...773...98B. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/773/2/98. S2CID   34112029.
  10. ↑ "Exoplanets: Postdoctoral Associates & Fellows". Yale University. Archived from the original on July 1, 2016.
  11. ↑ "Tabetha Suzanne Boyajian". International Astronomical Union. September 29, 2015. Archived from the original on October 28, 2015.
  12. ↑ Hackett, Jennifer (October 25, 2015). "Computers Would Never Have Found 'Alien Superstructure' Star--It Required Citizen Science". Scientific American . Retrieved 14 February 2016.
  13. ↑ Andersen, Ross (13 October 2015). "The Most Mysterious Star in Our Galaxy". The Atlantic . Retrieved 13 October 2015.
  14. ↑ Williams, Lee (15 October 2015). "Astronomers may have found giant alien 'megastructures' orbiting star near the Milky Way" . The Independent . Archived from the original on 2022-05-26. Retrieved 15 October 2015.
  15. 1 2 3 "The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe". TED (conference) . February 2016. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
  16. 1 2 "What's Up with Tabby's Star?". Search for extraterrestrial intelligence . 23 May 2017.
  17. ↑ Martinez, Miguel; Stone, Nicholas C.; Metzger, Brian D. (2019). "Orphaned Exomoons: Tidal Detachment and Evaporation Followingan Exoplanet-Star Collision". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 489 (4). Cornell University: 5119–5135. arXiv: 1906.08788 . Bibcode:2019MNRAS.489.5119M. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stz2464 . S2CID   195316956.
  18. ↑ Giuppone, Cristian; Cuello, Nicolás; Zuluaga, Jorge I.; Alvarado-Montes, Jaime A.; Mario, Sucerquia (2019). "Ploonets: formation, evolution, and detectability of tidally detached exomoons". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 489 (2). Cornell University: 2313–2322. arXiv: 1906.11400 . Bibcode:2019MNRAS.489.2313S. doi: 10.1093/mnras/stz2110 . S2CID   195700030.
  19. ↑ Plait, Phil (17 September 2019). "Boyajian's Star; Could its bizarre behavior be due to an evaporating exomoon?". SyFy Wire. Archived from the original on 19 September 2019. Retrieved 19 September 2019. have to say, as explanations go, this one is very compelling. It explains all the weird behavior, invokes physics we understand, will happen rarely (you need a specific setup of planets and moons and/or companions to do this) but is not so off-the-wall that you'd never expect it to happen.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.