Burst 33 - Astronomer David Blank Comments on Episode 41

Released: 20 March 2020
Duration: 31 minutes, 42 seconds

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Astronomer David Blank responded to our invitation to comment on the Villarroel+ paper we covered in Episode 41, which he describes as "very fascinating."

Links

The VASCO project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star"
Dorrit Hoffleit  and her autobiography: Misfortunes as Blessings in Disguise
Bradley Schaefer and the Harvard Plates
Josh Grindlay, PI of DASCH
The Very Large Array Sky Survey
The VASCO Citizen Science Project

 

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Lloyd Rogers


The Wow! Signal is released undertone Creative Common Attribution license.

Episode 44 - The Night Watch

Released: 22 January 2020
Live recording: 20 January 2020
Duration:  66 minutes 45 seconds
Thread: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Host Paul Carr, along with Daniela De Paulis and Ciro Villa welcome astronomer Stella Kafka, director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). We talk about the recent and possibly unprecedented dimming of Betelgeuse, among many other astronomy topics.

This was our very first Wow! Signal Live recording. We hope to get listener questions in as part of the live experience, but we have a lot to learn about how too encourage this. Your feedback will help.

Recent light curve from AAVSO for the Red Supergiant Betelgeuse

Links:

Stella Kafka's previous (2016) appearance on this podcast
Simbad page for Betelgeuse
Astronomical Magnitude System
Yes, Aboriginal Australians Can and Did Discover the Variability of Betelgeuse

Wow! Signal Team

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Panelists: Daniela De Paulis, Ciro Villa
Music: Claudio Nuñes, Felipe Sarro (playing Ravel)
Software: Zoom, OBS, Auphonic, Reaper, OS X Mojave
Hardware: Apple, Shure, Focusrite, Cloud, Elgato, Logitech

Episode 41 - The Vanishing Sources with Beatriz Villarroel

Released: 15 November 2019
Duration: 42 minutes, 24 seconds

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Figure 11 from the Paper

Our guest on Burst 19 in 2016, Dr. Beatriz Villarroel, returns to give us an update on the vanishing star, following the release of a new paper detailing a much more ambitious project along the same lines that finds a number of new candidate objects.

Links:

Burst 19: Our Sky Now and Then

Villarroel+: The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations project: I. USNO objects missing in modern sky surveys and follow-up observations of a "missing star"

The POSS-I Survey
Pan-STARRS
Chasing Disclosure (work of fiction that mentions the earlier research)

Chat with us on Discord

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky and Jason Robinson
Announcer: Erin Carr
This podcast is released under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.

Burst 32 - Become a Boyajian's Star Scientist in Your Spare Time

Released: 18 February 2019

Duration: 6 minutes, 48 seconds

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Paul Carr summarizes why we want to know more about this star, and how you can get involved.

Links:

The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe (Tabby's TED Talk)
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1
The Slow and Fast Dimming of Tabby's Star (Brad Schaefer)
Ben Montet Makes a Star Weirder

The KIC8462852_Analysis subreddit

The script for this episode (Creative Commons)

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky

Burst 30 - The Gaia DR2 Release and Boyajian's Star

Released: 24 April 2018
Duration: 10 minutes, 1 second

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Paul Carr talks about today's much more accurate distance estimate to Boyajian's Star from Gaia Data

Release 2, and what, if anything, this rules out.

Links:

Clemens+ (2018) - Proper Motion of the Faint Star near KIC 8462852 (Boyajian's Star) - Not a Binary System
Boyajian+ (2015) - Where's the Flux?
Interview with Brad Schaefer
Ben Montet Makes a Star Weirder
Castelaz and Barker (2018) - KIC 8462852: Maria Mitchell Observatory Photographic Photometry 1922 to 1991
Gaia DR2

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 29 - Caral Supe and Evangeline

Released: 23 April 2018
Duration:12 minutes, 21 seconds

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Los Cumbres light curve from www.wherestheflux.com

Paul Carr reviews what has been happening over the Winter and early Spring with respect to Boyajian's Star. We review the Winter observations, the Castelaz and Barker paper, and the two surprise March dips, Caral-Supe and Evangeline. We also talk about the upcoming Gaia Data Release 2 and what it might mean.

Links

Burst 24 and Burst 25
KIC 8462852: Maria Mitchell Observatory Photographic Photometry 1922 to 1991
Where's The Flux?
Bruce Gary's Boyajian's Star Page
Boyajian's R
Gaia DR2

Credits

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 28 - The Cosmic Archipelago, part III

Released: 6 February 2018
Duration: 24 minutes, 48 seconds

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A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis. Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. In order to resolve our cosmic archipelago problem we will have to attempt to reconstruct a history of our universe as a part of a far larger cosmological system, and to do this we will have to extend cosmology beyond the observable universe -- but what, exactly, is the observable universe?

Links:

The Cosmic Archipelago, Part I
The Cosmic Archipelago, Part II
Normal science

The Snapshot Effect

Radio Technology and Existential Risk

Boyajian's Star (KIC 8462852)

Supernova iPTF14hls
Przybylski's Star

Scientific Historiography: Past, Present, and Future

The Face of the Past

The Face of the Past, Part Two

Credits:

Writer and Host: Nick Nielsen
Producer and Announcer: Paul Carr
Music: by kind permission of the artist, Jason Robinson

The Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.

Burst 26 - The Cosmic Archipelago, Part 1.

Released: 21 January 2018
Duration: 19 minutes

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Henrietta Swan Leavitt,
discoverer of Leavitt's Law

A hundred years ago cosmologists were struggling to understand the nature and structure of the universe, and at the heart of this struggle was the island universe hypothesis.
Today we find ourselves confronted with a similar question posed at a far greater scale. As we confront these great questions of cosmology, whether a hundred years ago or today, we find ourselves faced with as many philosophical questions as scientific questions when we challenge the boundaries of our understanding. In Part I we focus on the original problems of constructing the cosmological distance ladder.

Links:

The Realm of the Nebula, Edwin Hubble

Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Immanuel Kant

The Great Debate

The Scale of the Universe, Shapley and Curtis

The 1920 Shapley-Curtis Discussion: Background,Issues, and Aftermath, V. Trimble

NGC 6822, a remote stellar system, Edwin Hubble

F. H. Bradley

deep time

Stellar Movements and the Structure of the Universe, Arthur Eddington

The Retrodiction Wall

Addendum on the Retrodiction Wall

Eternity in six hours: Intergalactic spreading of intelligent life and sharpening the Fermi paradox, Stuart Armstrong and Anders Sandberg

The End of Cosmology? Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer

 

Credits:

Writer and Host: Nick Nielsen
Producer and Voiceover: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 25 - The Elsie Paper

Released: 3 January 2018
Duration: 15 minutes, 37 seconds

The Elsie dip was chromatic

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Host Paul Carr goes over the new paper by Tabetha Boyajian and 206 coauthors: The First Post-Kepler Brightness Dips of KIC 8462852.

Links:

Deeg, et. al. (2018) - Non-grey dimming events of KIC8462852 from GTC spectrophotometry.

Jason Wright blogs on the Elsie Paper

Burst 13 - Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, part 1
Burst 23 - Tabby Boyajian's on Elsie
Burst 24 - The Summer of Tabby's Star
I'm Still Perplexed

Where's The Flux
The KIC 8462852 subreddit
The KIC 8462852 subreddit wiki

The Dream of the Open Channel
AAVSO
Boyajians_R

Credits:

Host, producer, writer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson
Figure: Boyajian, et. al. 

Burst 24- The Summer of Tabby's Star

Released: 3 December 2017
Duration: 11 minutes 43 seconds

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Host Paul Carr covers some recent developments with respect to Boyajian's Star, especially the 4 dips of the Summer of 2017.

Boyajian and Team's light curve for KI8462852 since just before the Elsie dip from wherestheflux.com

Links:

wherestheflux.com

Burst 23 - Tabby Boyajian discusses Elsie

Simon, et. al. - Where Is the Flux Going? The Long-Term Photometric Variability of Boyajian's Star
Meng, et. al. - Extinction and the Dimming of KIC 8462852
Steele, et. al. - Optical Polarimetry of KIC 8462852 in May-August 2017
Wyatt, et. al. -Modelling the KIC8462852 light curves: compatibility of the dips and secular dimming with an exocomet interpretation
NEOWISE

The script for the episode

Credits: 

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Burst 23 - Tabby Boyajian talks about the May 2017 dip

Released: 5 June 2017
Duration: 18 minutes 33 seconds

Downlink the .mp3 audio file

The dip as seen by the Las Cumbres telescope network

Paul Carr talks with Tabetha Boyajian about the flurry of observations of KIC 8462852 conducted
when the star dipped in brightness last month, and what might happen in the near future.

Topics include the relative size of the dip in different colors, the spectra, emission lines observed before the dip, periodicity, and what might happen soon.

Links: 

/r/KIC8462852
The KIC 8462852 Subreddit FAQ
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed
Where's the Flux?

http://www.brucegary.net/KIC846/#Yearly_Timescale_Fade_Observations

Burst 20
Season 3, Episode 4

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

The Wow! Signal Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.

Burst 22 - Tabby's Star is Dimming

Released: 19 May 2017
Duration: 12 minutes 57 seconds

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Host Paul Carr provides some brief remarks and one or two speculations about the dimming of Tabby's Star that began today.

Links:

The Astronomer's Telegram
The Reddit Discussion Forum
Jason Wright's Video
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed Part 1

The Wow! Signal podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons/Attribution Share-Alike license.

Burst 21 - The Absolute, Definitive Truth about Alien Megastructures

Released: 2 January 2017
Duration: 15 minutes, 37 seconds

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Based upon a Dream of the Open Channel blog entry, we discuss why there may not be any galaxy-scale megastructures, but what sort of stellar class megastructures could we possibly observe out there.

Please visit wowsignalpodcast.com for more information about this podcast.

 

Links:

Why Search?
The Jaws of Darkness
Glimpsing Heat from Alien Technologies
GHAT III: The Reddest Extended Sources from WISE

The Tully-Fisher relation as a probe of Dysonian astroengineering in disk galaxies

Earth in Human Hands
Searching for Cost Optimized Interstellar Beacons

The Script (several red lines not incorporated).

Wow! Signal Bursts

Credits:

Host, Writer and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

The Wow! Signal Podcast is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license.

Burst 20 - The Gaia Data Release 1 and the WTF Star

Recorded: 14 September 2016
Released: 14 September 2016
Duration:22 minutes, 22 seconds

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Astronomer Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian joined Paul Carr, Roger Wehbe, and Rusty Schweikart in a
Google Hangout to talk about the implications of the Gaia Data Release 1 for a better understanding of KIC 8462852, aka the "WTF star."

Links: 

Gaia Data Release 1
A.G.A. Brown, et. al., Gaia Data Release 1: Summary of the astrometric, photometric, and survey properties

Standard Error for the Gaia DR1 parallax vs. position in the sky

Earlier interview with Tabetha Boyajian
Interview with Ben Montet
Gaia Parallax for KIC 8462852 is 2.554887 mas
Jason Wright: What Could be Going on with Boyajian's Star? Part X: Wrap-up and Gaia's Promise
Wright and Siggurdson: Families of Plausible Solutions to the Puzzle of Boyajian's Star
Almost Certainly Wrong: an Alien Megastructure speculation about KIC 8462852

Credits:

Producer and Host: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Episode 33 - Ben Montet Makes a Star Weirder

Released: 8 August 2016
Duration:47 minutes 44 seconds

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Ben Montet

Host Paul Carr talks to astronomer Ben Montet,who has, with his colleague Joshua Simon, just published the result that Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) dimmed considerably over the four year course of the Kepler Space Telescope prime mission.

Guest Bio:

Ben Montet recently defended his Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology, where his thesis work focused on understanding the properties of low-mass stars and their companions. During his thesis, he led teams which measured the occurrence rate of Jupiter-sized planets in wide orbits around low-mass stars, developed the first catalog of confirmed transiting planets from the K2 mission, and characterized the first non-inflated brown dwarf with a directly measured mass, radius, and atmospheric properties. In September, he will begin a Carl Sagan Fellowship at the University of Chicago.

Links:

Montet and Simon, KIC 8462852 Faded Throughout the Kepler Mission
Interview with Bradley Schaefer on Dimming of Tabby's Star
Boyajian, et. al., KIC 8462852 - Where's The Flux?
Interview with Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian.

Aliens, perhaps, but not the Aliens of the Gaps.

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Announcer:Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, Erika Lloyd

Burst 19 - Our Sky Now and Then

Released: 31 July 2016
Duration: 24 minutes, 11 seconds

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Palomar Sky Survey image from 1950 around the area in question

Host Paul Carr discusses the recent paper "Our Sky Now and Then" with lead author and astronomer Beatriz Villarroel,a PhD student at the University of Upsalla in Sweden, Ms. Villarroel's team was undertaking an alternative approach to SETI, looking for evidence of effects in astronomical data that could not be due to natural effects.

Links:

Our Sky Now and Then
The USNO B1.0 Catalog
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey
The Lost Star (Vizier)
The Nearby Infrared WISE object
Jason Wright: A WISE Search for Large Extraterrestrial Civilizations

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson

Episode 30 - Not a Glimmer of an Idea

Released: 27 May 2016
Duration: 67 minutes, 16 seconds

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We interview LSU astronomer Bradley Schaefer about why he s sticking to his guns about the century-long dimming of Tabby's Star (KIC 8462952), why some popular explanations fail, and what can be done to further explore the reason that this star's behavior is so weird. In particular, Brad wants to encourage us to contribute to Tabetha Boyajian's kickstarter to buy telescope time to monitor the star.

Links:

The Fast and Slow Dimming of Tabby's Star
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1
The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe
Interview with Tabetha Boyajian
Brad Schaefer: KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165+-0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989
Brad Schaefer on Centauri Dreams: Further Thoughts on the Dimming of KIC 8462852

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Announcer: Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky, George Hrab

The Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Burst 17 - The Where's The Flux Kickstarter

Released: 18 May 2016
Durations: 3 minutes, 33 seconds

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A short Burst to briefly explain today's development and to ask listeners to seriously consider donating to the new Kickstarter to monitor KIC 8462852 with a network of telescopes using standardized photometry. The hope is that we will reliably detect the star in the act of dimming. Please share this and the link to the kickstarter widely, and drop a little coin on the effort. Together, we can catch Tabby's Star in the act and solve one of the biggest cosmic mysteries before us.

Links:

The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe (kickstarter.com)
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1 (Burst 13)
Interview With Tabetha Boyajian (Season 3, Episode 4)
Interview with Stella Kafka of the AAVSO (Season 3, Episode 5)

The script for this Burst

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Jason Robinson
Postprocessing: Auphonic.com
Hosting: Libsyn.com

The Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike license

Episode 29 - Catching Tabby's Star in the Act

Released: 3 May 2016
Duration: 35 minutes, 43 seconds

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Stella Kafka, director of the American Association of VariableStar Observers (AAVSO) tells us about

Stella Kafka

how her organization observes variable stars and how they hope to catch Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) in the act of dimming. Also, a brief update on BradleySchaefer's work

• Intro music: Dark Skies by DJ Spooky
• Intro announcement
• Welcome and quick summary
• Brief update on Bradley Schaefer's updated preprint
• Stella Kafka bio
• Interview with Stella Kafka
• Wrap up on AAVSO
• Nagging, begging, pleading
• Consider participating in the Unseen Podcast
• Thanking Patrons
• Outro music: Ockham's Shaving Kit by George Hrab

Links

AAVSO.org
Donate to the AAVSO

Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, part 1
The Fast and Slow Dimming of Tabby's Star
Interview with Tabetha Boyajian
Script for this episode

Support us on Patreon

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: DJ Spooky, Jason Robinson, Erika Lloyd, George Hrab
Announcer: Erin Carr
Hardware: Shure, Pro Art, Focusrite, Apple
Software: Skype, Reaper, Loopback, OS X Yosemite
Postprocessing: Auphonic.com
Hosting: Libsyn.com

Episode 28 - Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, part 3

Released: 6 April 2016
Duration: 43 minutes, 45 seconds
Thread: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian

In Tabbys' Star for the Perplexed Part 1, we explained why KIC 8462852 is a puzzling star. In Part 2, we talked
about some of the explanations put forth and their weaknesses. In the third and last (for now) part of the series, we talk to Tabby herself, and she answers several reasonably informed questions about her team's work, past, present and future.

• Introduction
• Interview with Yale's Tabetha "Tabby" Boyajian concerning KIC 8462852
• Frequently Asked Questions on Tabby's Star
• Some of the better speculative solutions
• Wrap up
• Thanking Patreon Subscribers
• Nagging, Begging
• We want to hear from you
• Outro

Links:

Boyajian, et. al., Planet Hunters IX: KIC 8462852 - Where's the Flux?
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed (blog post)
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1
Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 2
The Most Mysterious Star in the Universe

KIC 8462852 Facebook Page

Schaefer, KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165 +/- 0.014 Magnitudes Per Century from 1890 to 1989.
LCOGT
The Swift Mission
The AAVSO
Planet Hunters

KIC8462852 Subreddit
Centauri Dreams
The Unseen Podcast: I'm not saying it was aliens, but...

 

Credits:

Host and Producer: Paul Carr
VO: Erin Carr
Music: DJ Spooky and Sleep Research Facility

The spoken content of the Wow! Signal is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike license.