The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Searching Boyajian's Star for Laser Line Emission

Abstract

Boyajian' s Star (KIC 8462852) has received significant attention due to its unusual periodic brightness fluctuations detected by the Kepler Spacecraft and subsequent ground based observations. Possible explanations for the dips in the photometric measurements include interstellar or circumstellar dust, and it has been speculated that an artificial megastructure could be responsible. We analyze 177 high-resolution spectra of Boyajian's Star in an effort to detect potential laser signals from extraterrestrial civilizations. The spectra were obtained by the Lick Observatory's Automated Planet Finder telescope as part of the Breakthrough Listen Project, and cover the wavelength range of visible light from 374 to 970 nm. We calculate that the APF would be capable of detecting lasers of power greater than approximately 24 MW at the distance of Boyajian's Star, d = 1470 ly. The top candidates from the analysis can all be explained as either cosmic ray hits, stellar emission lines or atmospheric air glow emission lines.

References in corpus (11)

• Planet Hunters X. KIC 8462852 - Where's the Flux?
• APF - The Lick Observatory Automated Planet Finder
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Target Selection of Nearby Stars and Galaxies
• Comparison of Fermi-LAT and CTA in the region between 10-100 GeV
• KIC 8462852: Transit of a Large Comet Family
• Families of Plausible Solutions to the Puzzle of Boyajian's Star
• The First Post-Kepler Brightness Dips of KIC 8462852
• A Search for Laser Emission with Megawatt Thresholds from 5600 FGKM Stars
• Extinction and the Dimming of KIC 8462852
• Photometric and astrometric vagaries of the enigma star KIC 8462852
• Non-grey dimming events of KIC 8462852 from GTC spectrophotometry

Cited by in corpus (11)

• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Observations of 1327 Nearby Stars over 1.10-3.45 GHz
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Public Data, Formats, Reduction and Archiving
• The Breakthrough Listen Search For Intelligent Life Near the Galactic Center I
• Concepts for future missions to search for technosignatures
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: MeerKAT Target Selection
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: Searching for Technosignatures in Observations of TESS Targets of Interest
• A Green Bank Telescope search for narrowband technosignatures between 1.1-1.9 GHz during 12 Kepler planetary transits
• The Breakthrough Listen Search for Intelligent Life: A Laser Search Pipeline for the Automated Planet Finder
• A VERITAS/Breakthrough Listen Search for Optical Technosignatures
• One of Everything: The Breakthrough Listen Exotica Catalog
• Yuti: A General-purpose Transit Simulator for Arbitrary Shaped Objects Orbiting Stars