The Possible SETI Target HD 164595 - more messing around with Aladin

Last Update:  9 September 2016

There been a lot of kerfuffle lately about a possible SETI detection more than a year ago at the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Russia. Some would say far too much kerfuffle, since it was only seen once and may well admit to alternative explanations. SETI scientists like  Eric Korpela are unimpressed.

The Gaia data release and Tabby's Star - the ELI5

Updated 6 September 2016: the bookshelf analogy was a bit muddled - I think I've fixed it.

On the 14th of September 2016 we are expecting the first data release from Gaia, and it could well

Exploded view of the Gaia Probe

turn out to reinforce, constrain, or rule out some favorite conjectures about the weird behavior of a star romantically named KIC 8462852, aka Tabby's Star - behavior that was discovered by exploring the data from the Kepler Space Telescope.

Now, this is going to get pretty elementary, so if you feel you're already up to speed on the topics in the last paragraph, you may want to skip this.

Aliens, Perhaps, but Not the Aliens of the Gaps

Update (8 August 2016): Audio Interview with Ben Montet.

With the publication of Montet and Simon's arresting new preprint showing even more anomalous dimming behavior by Tabby's Star,  a lot of reasonable people are asking whether it's time to declare this stellar weirdness the work of an ET civilization, or whether it may be soon. While I am emotionally inclined to go this way, and intuitively sense that this may be the ultimate conclusion reached, I am not a believer. There is a fundamental error we still must avoid.

Light curve for KIC 8462852 from Montet and Simon

It is not crazy or deluded to think that this could be the work of ET. Not at all. We know that technological civilizations exist in our galaxy, we just don't know how many. It is easy to get into pointless arguments about whether there is just one, or the universe is swarming with creatures in some ways analogous to dexterous, talking monkeys like ourselves. These arguments are usually based upon probability guesses with very weak, or even non existent empirical support.

The truth is that nobody really knows how common ET civilizations are, or how long they flourish, and the so far null result of our (so far) very poorly funded SETI enterprise isn't much help in resolving it one way or the other, as has been argued by such persons as Jill Tarter for many years now.

Ok, it just got weirder

A huge development tonight in Tabby's Star with publication of Ben Montet's preprint. More soon.

There will be a hangout tonight to talk about it. Message  me if you are interested in coming into the hangout, but we are limited to 10 people total.

Messing Around in Aladin, part 1 - Tabby's Star and the missing star.

Last Update: 11 August 2016

This is another one of those draft entries that I will publish before it is done. I invite comments, questions and criticisms as always.

Looking into some of the stories I've been covering lately that live right in the imprecise border between astronomy and SETI, I've gotten interested in astronomical catalogs. It turns out that there are a lot of them, compiled over the years by a number of different scientific groups for different purposes. With the advent of astronomy outside the visible spectrum, the number of catalogs has multiplied, and it can be a daunting job to sift through them. I invite you to join me in my confusion and delight as I attempt to navigate my way through this glorious mess our civilization has built.

Aladin Sky Atlas is astronomy software made available for free from the University of Strasbourg in France. It gives you a graphical interface to a wide range of astronomical catalogs and image libraries. One thing it lets you do is overlay various catalogs across the electromagnetic spectrum around an object, so you can see for yourself what's nearby an object of interest and what its known properties are.

It turns out astronomers have cataloged far more objects than they have been able to study closely. As a result, there are many things not know about most of the cataloged objects. These are nearly all things that could be known if someone had the time and resources to look into them, but no one has yet.