A glint in the eye: Photographic plate archive searches for non-terrestrial artefacts Show others and affiliations
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-311672 DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2022.01.039 ISI: 000780329100002 Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85124463585 OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-311672 DiVA, id: diva2:1655317
Note QC 20220502
2022-05-022022-05-022022-06-25 Bibliographically approved