By 
November 25th, 2020
Credit: Big Ear Radio Telescope
In search for extraterrestrial intelligence circles, the famous “Wow!” signal appears to be a still-standing indication of detecting other starfolk.
Reports Alberto Caballero, an amateur astronomer and one of the founders of The Exoplanets Channel: “As of October 2020, the WOW! Signal remains the strongest candidate SETI signal.”
The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal received on August 15, 1977 by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope.
Astronomer Jerry Ehman discovered the anomaly a few days later while reviewing the recorded data – writing on the computer printout “Wow!” He also circled the string 6EQUJ5 representing the signal’s intensity variation over time. The entire signal sequence lasted for the full 72-second window during which Big Ear was able to pick the signal up.
The Big Ear Observatory
Courtesy of North American Astrophysical Observatory
Candidate source
In Caballero’s paper – “An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal” – he reports on his analysis of the thousands of stars in the WOW! Signal region that could have the highest chance of being the real source of the signal, providing that it came from a star system similar to ours.
A candidate source, Caballero surmises, is named 2MASS 19281982-2640123, “an ideal target to conduct observations in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets.”
In red, the two regions where the Wow! signal could have originated.
Source: Alberto Caballero/Pan-STARRS/DR1
Wanted: more information
However, Caballero points out that more information is needed in order to determine that 2MASS 19281982-2640123 is indeed a Sun-like star, he adds.
“Moreover, another 14 potential Sun-like stars in the WOW! Signal region were found in the Gaia Archive, but the estimations on their luminosity were unknown,” Caballero explains.
“In any case, since all these stars are located in the same part of the sky, it is ideal to search for exoplanets in the whole region where the WOW! Signal could have come from,” he concludes.
To read the Caballero paper — “An approximation to determine the source of the WOW! Signal” — go to:
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2011/2011.06090.pdf
Also, take a read of: “The Big Ear Wow! Signal – What We Know and Don’t Know About It After 20 Years,” written by Dr. Jerry R. Ehman (Last Revision: February 3, 1998)
Go to: http://www.bigear.org/wow20th.htm
Just for you “SETI whisperers” out there: In late 1997, after almost 40 years of operation, the Big Ear radio ceased operation. The telescope was destroyed in early 1998. An adjacent 9-hole golf course was expanded into 18 holes and about 400 homes were planned for construction on the nearby land owned by those developers.
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