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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Rather than debris or alien megastructures, Tabby's star may host a Saturn-like exoplanet [newscientist.com]:

The "alien megastructure" star that has been puzzling us for the past few years might have a more ordinary explanation: an orbiting Saturn-like planet, complete with wobbling rings. [...] Speculation abounded, with explanations ranging from exoplanetary comets to a vast orbiting "megastructure" built by an advanced alien civilisation.

Now Mario Sucerquia [astronomia-udea.co] and his colleagues at the University of Antioquia in Colombia have proposed another possibility: a ringed planet, similar to Saturn, orbiting close to the star. Such a planet would dim the star's light in an irregular way during a transit.

First, the rings would block some of the star's light, followed by the planet, which would dim it further. Then, after the planet passes, the rings would block some light again. But because the rings would be at a different angle each time, the small dips at the beginning and end of the transits would be larger or smaller. Without seeing many transits, there would be no obvious pattern to this.

"Saturn-like" can mean a variety of things for the hypothetical object. For example, the rings of 1SWASP J1407b [wikipedia.org] are about 200 times the diameter [rochester.edu] of the rings of Saturn.

Anomalous lightcurves of young tilted exorings [arxiv.org]

Related paper: KIC 8462852: Will the Trojans return in 2021? [arxiv.org]

Previously: Tabby's Star Under Observation After Dimming Event Detected [soylentnews.org]

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