An infrared excess is a measurement of an astronomical source, typically a

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

, that in their spectral energy distribution has a greater measured

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

flux Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications in physics. For transport phe ...

than expected by assuming the star is a blackbody radiator. Infrared excesses are often the result of circumstellar dust heated by starlight and reemitted at longer wavelengths. They are common in young stellar objects and evolved stars on the

asymptotic giant branch The asymptotic giant branch (AGB) is a region of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram populated by evolved cool luminous stars. This is a period of stellar evolution undertaken by all low- to intermediate-mass stars (about 0.5 to 8 solar masses) lat ...

or older. In addition, monitoring for infrared excess emission from stellar systems is one possible method that could enable a search for large-scale stellar engineering projects of a hypothetical extraterrestrial civilization; for example a

Dyson sphere A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy re ...

or Dyson swarm. This infrared excess would be the outcome of the waste heat emitted by the aforementioned structures if they are considered blackbodies at temperatures close to 300 K.

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Further reading