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A glint in the eye: Photographic plate archive searches for non-terrestrial artefacts
Stockholm Univ, Roslagstullsbacken 23, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden.;Inst Astrofis Canarias, Avda Via Lactea S-N, E-38205 San Cristobal la Laguna, Spain..
KTH, Centres, Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics NORDITA. Stockholm Univ, Roslagstullsbacken 23, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden..ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2670-2513
CERIST, Res Unit Sci Mediat, Sci Matter Div, Constantine, Algeria..
Ctr Astrobiol CSIC INTA, Dept Astrofis, Box 78, Villanueva De La Canada E28691, Spain.;Spanish Virtual Observ, Granada, Spain..
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2022 (English)In: Acta Astronautica, ISSN 0094-5765, E-ISSN 1879-2030, Vol. 194, p. 106-113Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In this paper, we present a simple strategy to identify Non-Terrestrial artefacts [NTAs; Haqq-Misra and Kopparapu (2012)] in or near geosynchronous Earth orbits (GEOs). We show that even the small pieces of reflective debris in orbit around the Earth can be identified through searches for multiple transients in old photographic plate material exposed before the launch of first human satellite in 1957. In order to separate between possible false point-like sources on photographic plates from real reflections, we present calculations to quantify the associated probabilities of alignments. We show that in an image with nine "simultaneous transients" at least four or five point sources along a line within a 10 * 10 arcmin(2) image box are a strong indicator of NTAs, corresponding to significance levels of 2.5 to 3.9 sigma. This given methodology can then be applied to set an upper limit to the prevalence of NTAs with reflective surfaces in geosynchronous orbits.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier BV , 2022. Vol. 194, p. 106-113
Keywords [en]
Transients, SETI, Space debris, Satellites, Non-terrestrial artefacts
National Category
Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-311672DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2022.01.039ISI: 000780329100002Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85124463585OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-311672DiVA, id: diva2:1655317
Note

QC 20220502

Available from: 2022-05-02 Created: 2022-05-02 Last updated: 2022-06-25Bibliographically approved

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Mattsson, Lars

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