Bradley Schaefer: Further Thoughts on the Dimming of KIC 8462852

Is the anomalous star KIC 8462852 undergoing a long-term dimming or not? We’ve looked at Bradley Schaefer’s work on the star and the follow-ups disputing the idea from Michael Hippke and Daniel Angerhausen (NASA GSFC), with collaboration from Keivan Stassun and Michael Lund (both at Vanderbilt University) and LeHigh University’s Joshua Pepper. Dr. Schaefer (Louisiana State University) believes the evidence for dimming is still strong, and in the post below explains why. He has also provided a link to a more detailed analysis with supporting graphs and figures for those who want to go still deeper (further information below). As we embark on the Kickstarter campaign to put ‘Tabby’s Star’ in the sights of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network — an important project to which I have contributed and hope you will as well — we continue to monitor this evolving story. No matter how it turns out, the Kepler data are iron-clad, so the success of the Kickstarter campaign is vital to provide us with the further data we need to make sense of what we are seeing at this unusual star.

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