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Tabetha "Tabby" Suzanne Boyajian is an American
astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either o ...
of Armenian descent and astrophysicist on
faculty Faculty may refer to: * Faculty (academic staff), the academic staff of a university (North American usage) * Faculty (division), a division within a university (usage outside of the United States) * Faculty (instrument) A faculty is a legal in ...
at
Louisiana State University Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 near ...
. She was a post-doctoral fellow 2012–16 at
Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
, working with
Debra Fischer Debra Ann Fischer is a professor of astronomy at Yale University researching detection and characterization of exoplanets. She was part of the team to discover the first known multiple-planet system. Education Fischer received her degree from ...
. Boyajian is active in the astronomical fields of stellar interferometry, stellar spectroscopy, exoplanet research, and high angular resolution astronomy, all particularly at
optical Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultrav ...
and
infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from aroun ...
wavelengths. She was the lead author of the September 2015 paper "Where's the Flux?", which investigated the highly unusual
light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular frequ ...
of KIC 8462852; the
star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make ...
is colloquially known as Tabby's Star in her honor.


Background

Boyajian received a BS degree in
Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...
with concentration in
Astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest ...
from the
College of Charleston The College of Charleston (CofC or Charleston) is a public university in Charleston, South Carolina. Founded in 1770 and chartered in 1785, it is the oldest university in South Carolina, the 13th oldest institution of higher learning in the Uni ...
in 2003, an MS degree in
Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which rel ...
from
Georgia State University Georgia State University (Georgia State, State, or GSU) is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1913, it is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities. It is also the largest institution of hig ...
in 2005, and a
PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...
degree in Astronomy from the same university in 2009.CV Dr. Tabetha Suzanne Boyajian
- scientific literature digital library
CiteSeerX CiteSeerX (formerly called CiteSeer) is a public search engine and digital library for scientific and academic papers, primarily in the fields of computer and information science. CiteSeer's goal is to improve the dissemination and access of a ...
She studied the sizes of nearby stars similar to the
Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared rad ...
, using the University's CHARA array, a long-baseline optical and infrared
interferometer Interferometry is a technique which uses the '' interference'' of superimposed waves to extract information. Interferometry typically uses electromagnetic waves and is an important investigative technique in the fields of astronomy, fiber o ...
located at
Mount Wilson Observatory The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles. The observ ...
. Boyajian was awarded a Hubble Fellowship, and stayed at Georgia State University to study sizes of nearby stars much smaller than the Sun and stars with planets. Fellow astronomer
Sarah Ballard Sarah Ballard (born 1984, NYU Special ublicColloqium, 2013 October 11.) is an American Professor of Astronomy currently at the University of Florida. She has been a Torres Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a L'Oreal Fellow, an ...
has described this as "truly remarkable" work and has used what she calls this "precious sample" of data on nearby small stars for the "characterization by proxy" method to help investigate the far more distant exoplanet Kepler-61b. Boyajian cowrote ''Extrasolar Planets and Their Host Stars'' in 2017 with Kaspar von Braun . , Boyajian is secretary and steering committee member of Division G Stars and Stellar Physics of the
International Astronomical Union The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreach ...
. Boyajian is also manager of the
Planet Hunters Planet Hunters is a citizen science project to find exoplanets using human eyes. It does this by having users analyze data from the NASA Kepler space telescope and the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It was launched by a team led by ...
project in which amateurs analyze data from the ''
Kepler Johannes Kepler (; ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of ...
'' space observatory.


Tabby's Star

On 14 October 2015, a strange pattern of light from star KIC 8462852, nicknamed "Tabby's Star" after Boyajian – the lead researcher who discovered the irregular light fluctuation – was captured by the
Kepler Space Telescope The Kepler space telescope is a disused space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbi ...
, and raised speculation that a
Dyson sphere A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to explain how a spacefaring civilization would meet ...
may have been discovered. In February 2016, Boyajian gave a TED talk where she explained why she and others thought they had possibly discovered a massive alien structure and speculation on Dyson's Spheres: Wanting to understand the strange light pattern, Boyajian put several hypotheses to the test. Everyone's first thought was an exoplanet detected around this massive star, but the dips in light lasted anywhere from 5 to 80 days and were erratically spaced apart thus ruling out any kind of an orbit for one celestial object. A dust cloud was proposed but the star showed no signs of being young so a dust cloud was highly improbable. Lastly, a comet shower was hypothesized. However as Boyajian pointed out in her TED talk this was the most likely out of all the hypotheses and yet was still highly improbable. So after all the natural explanations turned up weak, her team decided to send off their research to SETI (
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for scientific searches for intelligent extraterrestrial life, for example, monitoring electromagnetic radiation for signs of transmissions from civilizations on other p ...
) to rule out aliens. After reviewing the research the
SETI Institute The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and futu ...
was so intrigued that they decided to study the star themselves and pointed their
Allen Telescope Array The Allen Telescope Array (ATA), formerly known as the One Hectare Telescope (1hT), is a radio telescope array dedicated to astronomical observations and a simultaneous search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). The array is situated at t ...
(ATA) at the star "with hopes of catching a tell-tale signal that might reveal a technological civilization." The
SETI Institute The SETI Institute is a not-for-profit research organization incorporated in 1984 whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to use this knowledge to inspire and guide present and futu ...
mentioned what caught their eye and made them take on the research themselves: "Even more interesting, the timing of the present dip (in light) suggests that whatever this material is, it is situated at just the right distance from the star to be in the 'habitable zone,' where we believe life like ours could develop as it has on Earth." Being as skeptical as Boyajian was, she took SETI's approach and allowed herself to have a bit of fun in hypothesizing what the light pattern could have been. In her Ted Talk she joked: The search for answers to KIC 8462852 is still ongoing, with two papers published in the summer of 2019 offering plausible scientific scenarios, involving larger moons being stripped from their planets.


Publications

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See also

*
Methods of detecting exoplanets Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the reflected light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the intrinsic difficulty o ...


References


External links

*
"The most mysterious star in the universe"
Tabetha Boyajian at TED 2016. Video and transcript. {{DEFAULTSORT:Boyajian, Tabetha S. American women astronomers Yale University fellows Georgia State University alumni College of Charleston alumni Hubble Fellows Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Living people American people of Armenian descent Armenian astronomers