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 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 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 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 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

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

Burst 13 - Tabby's Star for the Perplexed, Part 1

Released: 10 March 2016
Duration: 18 minutes, 1 second

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In Part 1, Paul Carr provides a non-technical explanation of why the star informally known as Tabby's Star (KIC 8462852) is so perplexing after all. What was observed, and why doesn't it fit a conventional explanation?

The Dips observed by Kepler, numbered

Links

Please see our companion blog post at Dream of the Open Channel.

Boyajian, et. al., Planet Hunters X - Where's the Flux? (aka B2015)

Planet Hunters
I'm not saying it was Aliens…
The Slow and Fast Dimming of Tabby's Star.

Credits

Written, Produced and Read by Paul Carr
Music by Jason Robinson

Episode 27 - The Slow and Fast Dimming of Tabby's Star

Released: 14 January 2016
Duration: 62 minutes 4 seconds

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Host Paul Carr talks to Dr. Bradley Schaefer about his research showing a dramatic dimming of

Bradley Schaefer

Tabby's Star over a century. This all but rules out any explanation anyone has put forth so far for the short term dimming of the star found in the Kepler data by Boyajian, et. al.

Links

KIC 8462852 Faded at an Average Rate of 0.165+-0.013 Magnitudes Per Century From 1890 To 1989
Where's the Flux? (paper by Boyajian, et. al.)

Centauri Dreams Discussion
KIC 8462852 - The Infrared Flux
IRTF/SPEX Observations of the Unusual Kepler Lightcurve System KIC8462852
Constraints on the Circumstellar Dust Around KIC 8462852

DASCH

I'm Not Saying it Was Aliens (Unseen Podcast panel discussion of Tabby's Star)

The AAVSO

No Signal Found from KIC8462852

Bradley E. Schaefer

Support us on Patreon

Update: Hippke and Angerhausen disagree:  KIC 8462852 did likely not fade during the last 100 years

Further Update: Schaefer responds to Hippke on Centauri Dreams.

Further, further update: Hippke paper is revised in response to comments & We interview DASCH PI Josh Grindlay.

Credits
Host and Producer: Paul Carr
Music: Dj Spooky, Jason Robinson, Mike Griffin, George Hrab