[LINK] "SETI Institute Undertakes Search for Alien Signal from Kepler Star KIC 8462852"

[rfmcdonald]

Universe Today's Bob King reports on the latest, plausible, SETI target.

“We either caught something shortly after an event like two planets crashing together or alien intelligence,” said Dr. Gerald Harp, senior scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, referring to the baffling light variations seen in the Kepler star KIC 8462852.

And he and a team from the Institute are working hard at this moment to determine which of the two it is.

Beginning last Friday (Oct. 16), the Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA) was taken off its normal survey schedule and instead focused on KIC 8462852, one of the 150,000-plus stars studied by NASA’s Kepler Mission to detect Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting distant stars.. The array of 42 dishes comprises a fully automated system that can run day and night, alerting staff whenever an unusual or interesting signal has been detected.