Mystery of 'Alien Megastructure' Star Testing Astronomers' Creativity

In September 2015, Yale University's Tabetha Boyajian and her colleagues reported that the star KIC 8462852 has dimmed dramatically multiple times over the past seven years, once by an astounding 22 percent. 

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope spotted these dimming events. But the brightness dips of "Boyajian's star," as it has come to be known, were far too significant to be caused by an orbiting planet, so astronomers began thinking of alternative explanations. 

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