SETI & Technosignatures

Breakthrough Listen Follow-up of the Random Transiter (EPIC 249706694/HD 139139) with the Green Bank Telescope

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.EP
October 9, 2019
Filed under
Breakthrough Listen Follow-up of the Random Transiter (EPIC 249706694/HD 139139) with the Green Bank Telescope
Green Bank Observatory
Green Bank Observatory

The star EPIC 249706694 (HD 139139) was found to exhibit 28 transit-like events over an 87 day period during the Kepler mission’s K2 Campaign 15 (Rappaport et al. 2019).

These events did not fall into an identifiable pattern and could not be explained by a multitude of transit scenarios explored by the authors. We conduct follow-up observations at C-band frequencies with the Green Bank Telescope as part of the ongoing Breakthrough Listen search for technosignatures.

We search for narrow band signals above a signal-to-noise threshold of 10 and with Doppler drift rates within +-5 Hz/s. We detect no evidence of technosignatures from EPIC 249706694 and derive an upper limit for the EIRP (Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power) of putative transmissions to be 10 TW.

Bryan Brzycki, Andrew P. V. Siemion, Steve Croft, Daniel Czech, David DeBoer, Julia DeMarines, Jamie Drew, J. Emilio Enriquez, Vishal Gajjar, Nectaria Gizani, Howard Isaacson, Brian C. Lacki, Matt Lebofsky, David H. E. MacMahon, Imke de Pater, Daniel C. Price, Sofia Z. Sheikh, Claire Webb, S. Pete Worden
(Submitted on 8 Oct 2019)
Comments: 3 pages, 1 table. Accepted for publication in RNAAS
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:1910.03711 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1910.03711v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Bryan Brzycki
[v1] Tue, 8 Oct 2019 22:57:00 UTC (50 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.03711
Astrobiology, SETI

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻