2MASS 19281982-2640123 is a Sun-like star located in the area of Sagittarius constellation where the Wow! Signal is most widely believed to have originated.[1][2] The star was identified in a 2022 paper as the most similar to the Sun out of the three solar analogs found inside the sky region.[3][4] The star is 1,800 light years away; this is approximately 132 light years away from Claudio Maccone's estimation of where the closest communicative civilization to Earth is most likely to exist per his calculated solution to the Drake Equation.[5]
The star has a right ascension of 19h 28m 19.8s, a declination of -26° 40' 12.59", an estimated temperature of 5,783 Kelvin, a radius of 0.99 solar radii, and a luminosity 1.0007 times that of the Sun.[6] The team used the Gaia Archive to identify another dozen of candidates to be Sun-like stars, but the estimations on their luminosity were unknown.[7]
- ^ Adam Mann (2022-05-24). "Famous 'alien' Wow! signal may have come from distant, sunlike star". Space.com. Retrieved 2022-11-13.
- ^ "Sun-like star identified as the potential source of the Wow! Signal". Astronomy.com. November 23, 2020. Retrieved 2022-11-13.
- ^ "Astronomer may have detected the source of the famous extraterrestrial 'Wow!' signal". The Independent. 2022-05-25. Retrieved 2022-11-13.
- ^ "Did the Wow! signal come from this star? | Space | EarthSky". earthsky.org. 2020-12-02. Retrieved 2022-11-13.
- ^ "An Introduction to the Statistical Drake Equation". Treath Report.
- ^ Caballero, Alberto (2022). "An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal". International Journal of Astrobiology. 21 (3): 129–136. arXiv:2011.06090. Bibcode:2022IJAsB..21..129C. doi:10.1017/S1473550422000015. ISSN 1473-5504. S2CID 226307031.
- ^ Choi, Charles Q. "45 years later, scientists hone in on[sic] a mysterious alien signal's origin". Inverse. Retrieved 2022-11-13.