UFO orbiting a star: what is it?

Dr. Karen Collins, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), in collaboration with a large science team, recently discovered a mysterious object called TIC 400799224. mysterious cosmic being revolves around a star.

The team enlisted the help of TESS and Transiting a satellite to survey the outer planets, which is a NASA space telescope launched in 2018 with the aim of Discover the small planets around the stars Closer to the sun.

TESS has so far discovered 172 confirmed exoplanets and compiled a list of 4,703 candidate exoplanets. Its ultra-sensitive camera is capable of capturing images that cover a huge field of view, more than twice the area of ​​the constellation Orion, during assembly as well. Catalog of more than 1 billion items, the TESS Input Catalog (TIC).

The astronomers then searched the TESS record using computational tools based on machine learning, developed from behaviors observed in Hundreds of thousands of known variable elements.

mysterious source TIC 400799224 She was spotted by chance Rapid change in brightness, by nearly 25% in just four hours, followed by many sharp changes that could be interpreted as an eclipse.

Then the astronomers studied the object with a variety of instruments, some of which had been observing the sky for much longer than TESS had been on, and discovered how likely TIC 400799224 might be. A celestial body orbiting in a binary star system, where one of the two stars pulsates for 19.77 days.

The authors of the discovery stated: “We may encounter a UFO orbiting the host star and that It periodically emits clouds of dust that hide it. Moreover, the nature of the orbiting object is also surprising“.

actually The amount of dust emitted is unusual. To give an example, if such mass was produced by the disintegration of a large object such as the asteroid Ceres in our solar system, it could still be visible only eight thousand years before its disappearance, instead, the dust emitted by TIC 400799224 has apparently remained unchanged.

So the team is very excited about the discovery, and it has a purpose Continue to observe the object and incorporating historical observations of the sky to attempt to identify the differences that occurred over many decades.

Who knows how much we will be able to discover more about space as well thanks to new technologies, such as The first planet to orbit three stars. And about innovative astronomical instruments, have you ever wondered Where is the James Webb Telescope located now? Here is a great site to follow his journey.