DavidMcC wrote:

newolder wrote:I know. Check the data at the linked article. It's an ongoing event and folk are adjusting telescope time to get a look.

I'm sure it's still happening, but that's hardly a reason to get all excited. OTOH, if it stopped being irregular, that really WOULD be news.

newolder wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:

newolder wrote:I know. Check the data at the linked article. It's an ongoing event and folk are adjusting telescope time to get a look.

I'm sure it's still happening, but that's hardly a reason to get all excited. OTOH, if it stopped being irregular, that really WOULD be news.

I do not need, nor did I seek, your permission to get excited.

DavidMcC wrote:... I was just surprised that you were so fascinated by a "no change" situation, although I can understand a news-starved journal repeating old news.

newolder wrote:

DavidMcC wrote:... I was just surprised that you were so fascinated by a "no change" situation, although I can understand a news-starved journal repeating old news.

Your surprise is irrelevant and off topic.

Streamed live on 19 May 2017

Tabby's Star (aka the WTF Star, Boyajian's Star, the Most Mysterious Star in the Universe) is entering another of its irregular dips. Here at UC Berkeley SETI we're lucky to have Prof. Jason Wright visiting this week. Join him and Berkeley SETI Director Dr. Andrew Siemion at 11 Pacific for live updates. Tweet your questions @BerkeleySETI.

DavidMcC wrote:Ok, so maybe you should have said that it's doing something interesting and useful again (so that it can perhaps be better understood), rather than just still behaving strangely.

newolder wrote:"Something weird is happening..." right now.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/d ... ture-star/

May 19, 2017
As far as weird stars go, few are as strange as KIC 8462852, nicknamed Tabby's star. Tabby's star randomly dims and brightens for apparently no reason, which led some astronomers in 2015 to hypothesize that some sort of 'alien megastructure' was orbiting the star, occasionally blocking the light. Other scientists proposed a large asteroid field or a swarm of comets instead, but we still don't really know what's going on.

All of that might be about to change. Early this morning, astronomers detected one of those characteristic dips that are unique to Tabby's star. All of the other dips that we know of are from historical observations, but this one is happening right now, which gives astronomers a chance to really figure out what's happening.
...

more at link.

DavidMcC wrote:Ok, so maybe you should have said that it's doing something interesting and useful again (so that it can perhaps be better understood), rather than just still behaving strangely.

Radial Velocity Measurements

Radial velocity is the movement toward or away from an observer, and can be determined from looking at the spectrum of light coming from a star or galaxy. It is the same technique Edwin Hubble used in the early 20th century to show that the universe is expanding. The radial velocity can do couple of things for us:
Although no one thinks it's at all likely anyway, it can show that the star is not moving at ridiculously high velocities towards or way from us, which could have weird effects.

If Tabby's star has a large, dark companion that orbits closely, you would expect to see wobbles in the radial velocity.
The radial velocity measurements performed on Tabby's Star were not the most accurate possible (you need a bigger telescope and more time), but they were good enough to show that there is no large, dark companion close to Tabby's star, and that its movement through space is nothing extraordinary. We can't however, rule out a big dark companion object further away from the star, but it could not cause both sets of dips, since it would take it too long to orbit the star.