Amateur and professional astronomers alike are scrambling to figure out why the celestial body known as KIC 8462852, or Boyajian's star, is acting so weird.

First observed by the Kepler space telescope in several years ago, KIC 8462852 (also called “Tabby’s star” as a nod to astronomer Tabetha Boyajian, who decoded its signature from Kepler's data in 2015), has dimmed by as much as 22 percent in the past, a dramatic behavior not previously observed in stars.