Searching for “Boyajian’s Star” Analogs with ZTF

A 15min talk given at the ZTF Collaboration Meeting 2019, hosted at the University of Washington's Dept. of Astronomy. The topic is searching for similar stars the the mysterious "Boyajian's Star" aka Tabby's Star aka KIC 8262852, using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). I also briefly discuss the opportunity for ZTF and other surveys to do SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) research.

Transcript

1. Searching for 
 “Boyajian’s Star” Analogs with ZTF James R. A. Davenport (UW) : : :: jradavenport
2. Searching for 
 “Boyajian’s Star” Analogs with ZTF jradavenport ZTF WTF James R. A. Davenport (UW) : : ::
3. !3 jradavenport “Boyajian’s Star” aka “Tabby’s Star”
4. !4 “Boyajian’s Star” aka “Tabby’s Star” jradavenport
5. !5 jradavenport Wikipedia Twitter “Boyajian’s Star” aka “Tabby’s Star”
6. A seemingly normal “F type” star Temperature: 6000–7600 deg K artist conception jradavenport
7. A seemingly normal “F type” star artist conception WTF ??? jradavenport
8. !8 jradavenport ~8% of Kepler 4-yr light curve in “dips” Strange Dips!
9. !9 slow 3% fade! The plot thickens jradavenport
10. !10 1-2% variation jradavenport Continued monitoring… still weird 2017 Boyajian et al. (2018)
11. !11 jradavenport comets?
12. !12 jradavenport planet smash?!
13. !13 Long timescale modulations may be repeating…? Simon et al. (2018) jradavenport
14. !13 Long timescale modulations may be repeating…? Simon et al. (2018) Hippke et al. (2018) jradavenport
15. !14 Ballesteros et al. (2018) jradavenport
16. !15 2 Mysterious Behaviors 1.Short timescale: dimming events. Strange shape, very “deep”, random times.
 
 
 
 2.Long Timescale: fading/brightening. Very slow, 
 timescale/depth unknown jradavenport
17. jradavenport !16 https://github.com/dirac-institute/ZTF_Boyajian Searching for 
 “Boyajian’s Star” Analogs with ZTF ZTF WTF
18. !17 jradavenport
19. !18 Dyson sphere? jradavenport
20. jradavenport !19 Typical Radio SETI e.g. see Wright, Kanodia, & Lubar (2018) ZTF: a SETI Platform ?? Davenport (2019) https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04443 9D “Haystack” Volume
21. !20 Fl295 - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3734115 jradavenport Searching for Lighthouses
22. jradavenport !21 Searching for Lighthouses e.g. looking for repeating, non-periodic patterns Fibonacci pulses Davenport (2019) https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.04443
23. !22 Simulated VASCO Data Time Flux Time (decades) Flux e.g. Villarroel et al. (2016) jradavenport VASCO:
 Vanishing & Appearing Sources over a Century of Observations *this team interested in ZTF forced phot for validation!
24. !23 - RCorBor and similar dusty stars - YSO’s (FU Ori’s) - stellar mergers - He flash objects - “Boyajian’s star” - changing look AGN - flares, novae, SNe, transients… - stellar activity evolution - “Boyajian’s star” - massive star evolution - binary stars? - also AGN? “Short” timescale “Long” timescale More room for discovery here! jradavenport BUT, a few types of stars will produce false positives
 (thankfully most are interesting too!) VASCO:
 Vanishing & Appearing Sources over a Century of Observations
25. jradavenport !24 ZTF WTF ZTF a good platform for finding weird, rare things! We’re on the hunt for other examples of “Boyajian’s Star” ZTF could also be first major optical survey to do SETI, build tools, pave way for LSST Time Flux