{"id":372112,"date":"2026-07-11T12:36:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T19:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=372112"},"modified":"2026-07-11T12:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T19:36:08","slug":"tabbys-star-may-have-a-giant-planet-culprit-new-study-on-its-dimming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/tabbys-star-may-have-a-giant-planet-culprit-new-study-on-its-dimming\/","title":{"rendered":"Tabby\u2019s Star may have a giant-planet culprit: new study on its dimming"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new study on KIC 8462852, better known as Tabby\u2019s Star, has just come out, and it points to a possible giant planet<\/strong> that could help explain the star\u2019s long-running, irregular fading. The main clue, according to the paper, is a single transit seen in September 2019. It lasted roughly 21 hours and looks consistent with a companion around ten times Jupiter\u2019s mass. Tabby\u2019s Star has stood out for more than a decade because its dips in brightness don\u2019t look like normal planetary transits, and some of those drops have reached about 22%.<\/p>\n

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Lead author Cristina Madurga-Favieres and her colleagues say a planet that large could stir up comets, planetesimals, or other material, creating uneven dust clouds and giving the system a plausible source for its messy dimming<\/strong>. Madurga-Favieres also noted that no transiting companion had been detected there before.<\/p>\n\n

For people who\u2019ve followed the Tabby\u2019s Star mystery, this also fits the bigger picture. Citizen scientists with Planet Hunters first flagged the star in 2015<\/strong> using NASA\u2019s Kepler data. The alien megastructure speculation lost momentum later, once follow-up observations showed that more blue light was being blocked than red. In 2016, astronomer Tabetha Boyajian raised more than $100,000 through Kickstarter<\/a> for follow-up work. And over time, other ideas, from comet swarms to a destroyed exomoon, stellar changes, and a nearby companion, have more and more given way to explanations built around dust and debris.<\/p>\n\n

You can read the new findings in the latest study, though the paper is careful on one point: a single transit still doesn\u2019t confirm the planet<\/strong>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study on KIC 8462852, better known as Tabby\u2019s Star, has just come out, and it points to a possible giant planet that could help explain the star\u2019s long-running, irregular fading. The main clue, according to the paper, is a single transit seen in September 2019. It lasted roughly 21 hours and looks consistent … Continue reading “Tabby\u2019s Star may have a giant-planet culprit: new study on its dimming”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9265,"featured_media":372111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-372112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=372112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":372113,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/372112\/revisions\/372113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/372111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=372112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=372112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=372112"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=372112"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=372112"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=372112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}