Deep space has lots of mysteries.In observations gathered by NASAs Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers found yet another mystery, and a dirty one at that. In new research, a group of scientists examines possible causes of strange signals released by a things dubbed TIC 400799224. Based on what astronomers have seen so far, the scientists suggest that this object might be a binary star, or double star system, in which among the stars is surrounded by a huge cloud of dust, the rubble of maybe a large asteroid, according to a statement from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, home to among the researchers on the team.Related: The 10 most significant exoplanet discoveries of 2021TESS is developed to identify exoplanets by searching for small, balanced dips in the brightness of a star– dips triggered by a world passing in between the telescope and the star, obstructing a smidge of its light. Worlds arent the only phenomenon that can cause changing brightness like this, so TESS has collected a bounty of observations on whatever from supernovas (taking off stars) to triple star systems and more.When the scientists were looking through TESS information gathered in early 2019, TIC 400799224 stood out due to the fact that it ended up being almost 25% dimmer in simply a few hours, then made a number of more abrupt brightness changes. (TIC means TESS Input Catalog and referrals a database of “every optically relentless, stationary things in the sky,” by the method.)An image taken by the Dark Energy Camera in Chile reveals TIC 400799224. (Image credit: Powell et al., 2021)TESS spends about one month on a single patch of the sky then proceeds, however these spots overlap, so the object was included in four different sectors observed between March 2019 and May 2021. The scientists also relied on other instruments for extra info on the odd object, incorporating information from centers consisting of the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae and the Las Cumbres Observatory, both networks of ground-based observatories around the globe.Taken together, all this information let scientists piece together a photo of what might be causing the strange signal. The scientists suspect that at the heart of TIC 400799224 is a binary star in which two similar stars circle each other. One of those stars appears to be pulsing every 19.77 days, triggering the more complicated patterns; that pulsing, the astronomers argue, is caused by an enormous cloud of dust surrounding the star. That dust has a combined mass equivalent to the remains of an asteroid 6 miles (10 kilometers) large, they calculate.The researchers think about a couple of various descriptions for all that dust, however suggest that the most likely case is that collisions between mini planet-like items like asteroids are producing the dust. Still, its a tricky case to discuss because the quantity of dust spending time appears to have actually remained quite stable throughout the 6 years that the researchers can discover existing observations of TIC 400799224. The researchers hope to continue observing the challenge much better comprehend its unusual patterns.The research study is explained in a paper released Dec. 8 in The Astronomical Journal.Email Meghan Bartels at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
