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It turns out that Tabby’s Star — the star that has been hypothesized to have an alien megastructure around it — is not alone when it comes to wild fluctuations in its light output. Astronomers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics have found yet another star that experiences its own drops in brightness, although this one may offer a clue as to why it appears to periodically flicker out.
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The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program is currently investigating a high-energy signal burst that originated from a star 95 light years away, in the constellation Hercules. SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak cautions that this is unlikely to be an artificial signal, as there are a number of natural phenomena that could also have produced the signal.

The signal was recorded by Russian astronomers at the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Zelenchukskaya. Unfortunately, the signal was recorded on May 15, 2015, nearly a year and a half ago, a delay that severely hampers verification of the other signal from other telescopes. Nonetheless, SETI will be listening to the star on the off chance that there might be a repeat of the signal.
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An exoplanet 320 light-years from Earth has been found in a trinary star system, photographed by the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile. Aside from having the distinction of being one of mere handful of exoplanets that have been directly imaged, the planet, labeled as HD 131399Ab, has a year that lasts 550 Earth years, as it orbits the large central star.
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An Asian studies expert and amateur satellite tracker have voiced their concerns over the possibility that China’s Tiangong-1 space station may be de-orbiting without control from the ground. The station, launched in 2011, was a temporary testbed for the technologies for Tiangong-2, a permanent station scheduled to be launched in September of this year. Beijing’s original plan was to de-orbit the spacecraft in 2013, but Tiangong-1, Chinese for "Heavenly Palace 1", remained in orbit after that date, conducting long-term endurance tests of the now unmanned station’s components.
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