NASA says space anomaly likely caused by comets

A research team from Iowa State University looked at data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, and found that the strange dips in light, which were initially theorized to be possible structures, were likely a “swarm of comets.”

The system, KIC 8462852, had been under scrutiny since its unusual light fluctuation was discovered by users of the online astronomy crowdsourcing site Planet Hunters. The group uses publicly available data gathered by NASA’s Kepler Telescope, which has been tasked with finding Earth-like planets by searching for the periodic dimming of stars that might suggest such a planet is passing by.

But NASA says the Kepler Telescope only viewed the star in “visible light,” and in this case, they searched by infrared light.

“It’s possible that a family of comets is traveling on a very long, eccentric orbit around the star,” NASA said in a statement. “At the head of the pack would be a very large comet, which would have blocked the star’s light.”