Some things they do know;
*it's not starspots. They are pretty sure the data does show those, and they are not related to the big dimming
*it's not a planet, or it's not just a planet, it's big, way too big
*whatever 'it' is, it isn't warm. If it's close to the star, and blocking/absorbing that much light, it should warm up as a consequence and be detectable in the IR.
*it's not symmetrical, or if it is, it's orientation to us can change VERY rapidly
*I haven't seen a discussion of this elsewhere, but a very large ring system around a planet orbiting this star would seem to be very unlikely, the ring system would be far larger than Saturn's and it's orientation to us could not change rapidly. Also, a big ring system intersecting that much light (presumably) near a star would be warm, and we would already have seen that
* it's 'unique', to the extent we haven't found anything like it so far
*it may not be 'unique' in that the Kepler satellite was looking at an extremely tiny tiny percentage of the total number of stars in our galaxy
*the phenomena is related to that star, it is not a background or foreground object playing 'tricks' on us (the search for follow on objects for Hew Horizons to study was complicated by the unexpectedly more numerous variable stars turned up by the Subaru telescope during the search)
* the star is slightly hotter and more massive than our sun, but not freakishly so. It's an 'F' star, one up on the chart. Next higher are 'A' stars and they would be quite a bit brighter and hotter than our sun.
* the star (so far) has not shown any 'weird' brightening. For instance, hypothetically speaking, if an enormous flat disc of mylar was orbiting the star, and as it did so, it's orientation to us changed rapidly, we would see darkenings with the asymmetry noted in the light curves, but for such a contrived example, at some point we would expect the object to reflect more light our way, like when it passes on the far side of the star. Kepler did not see that.
* we have quite a bit of equipment available to study this star. If it doesn't start yielding it's secrets to other telescopes, Hubble might be employed to study it.
* I'm still expecting archival data on this star to be searched and there just about has to be more images of it to study. They can figure past dates when 'odd' dimmings might have been occurrring, and they can check records and databases for those dates and see what other scopes were making observations in that part of the sky. Even amateur backyard astronomers can have useful photometry or pictures of this area.
*it's not starspots. They are pretty sure the data does show those, and they are not related to the big dimming
*it's not a planet, or it's not just a planet, it's big, way too big
*whatever 'it' is, it isn't warm. If it's close to the star, and blocking/absorbing that much light, it should warm up as a consequence and be detectable in the IR.
*it's not symmetrical, or if it is, it's orientation to us can change VERY rapidly
*I haven't seen a discussion of this elsewhere, but a very large ring system around a planet orbiting this star would seem to be very unlikely, the ring system would be far larger than Saturn's and it's orientation to us could not change rapidly. Also, a big ring system intersecting that much light (presumably) near a star would be warm, and we would already have seen that
* it's 'unique', to the extent we haven't found anything like it so far
*it may not be 'unique' in that the Kepler satellite was looking at an extremely tiny tiny percentage of the total number of stars in our galaxy
*the phenomena is related to that star, it is not a background or foreground object playing 'tricks' on us (the search for follow on objects for Hew Horizons to study was complicated by the unexpectedly more numerous variable stars turned up by the Subaru telescope during the search)
* the star is slightly hotter and more massive than our sun, but not freakishly so. It's an 'F' star, one up on the chart. Next higher are 'A' stars and they would be quite a bit brighter and hotter than our sun.
* the star (so far) has not shown any 'weird' brightening. For instance, hypothetically speaking, if an enormous flat disc of mylar was orbiting the star, and as it did so, it's orientation to us changed rapidly, we would see darkenings with the asymmetry noted in the light curves, but for such a contrived example, at some point we would expect the object to reflect more light our way, like when it passes on the far side of the star. Kepler did not see that.
* we have quite a bit of equipment available to study this star. If it doesn't start yielding it's secrets to other telescopes, Hubble might be employed to study it.
* I'm still expecting archival data on this star to be searched and there just about has to be more images of it to study. They can figure past dates when 'odd' dimmings might have been occurrring, and they can check records and databases for those dates and see what other scopes were making observations in that part of the sky. Even amateur backyard astronomers can have useful photometry or pictures of this area.
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.
