Could the KIC 8462852 (Alien megastructure star) be explained by orbiting gas clouds? I was wondering about the light dimming of the 'alien megastructure' star.
From what I understand, for it to be a planetary body, it would have to be some 20 times the size of Jupiter.
Is it possible that it could be caused by some huge, dense gas cloud, orbiting around the star?
No.


The light curves don't look at all like anything transiting. The ingress and egress profiles and the timing are way beyond that kind of explanation. Not planets, not comets, not clouds, not alien super structures.
No infrared light from dust or gas has been detected, as they should've been if the starlight had heated small particles. And since this is an F star with about 50% larger diameter than the Sun, which contains 99% of the mass in our Solar System, you can imagine how huge any comet/dust/gas cloud has to be to cover 22% of it.
No brightening of the starlight has been detected, as this allegedly huge"cloud" orbits behind the star and should reflect light to us. Shouldn't those huge icy comet clouds reflect some starlight?
Jupiter is about as large as a planet can get, even with 10+ times more mass, its volume would not increase by much. Gas giants differ much more in mass than in volume. An object 20 or 200 times more massive than Jupiter would be a roughly Jupiter sized red dwarf star, and that is not what has been observed at "Tabby's star".


The anomalies correlate strictly with the telescope's orbital period and orientation and are obviously a man made artefact because of some unforeseen malfunction of the instrument, nothing astrophysical is involved.