I don't believe these constitutes evidence of alien technology, but I do believe we should explain such observations (regardless of what it turns out to be: doctored data, natural phenomena,...)
It bothers me that for increasing distances the explanations requier ever bigger or stronger reflectors, but objects much closer to the telescope are not considered. A spec of dust temporarily illuminated (lightning? artificial light? etc.) or myriad of other explanations are not explored.
We should first try to figure out possible explanations by reasoning, but in a worst case scenario, if relating the sensitivity of the old telescope and modern observation proves too tenuous, there is always the last resort of reconstructing the telescope as it used to function, and have a modern telescope observe the same field of view. Then we could relate the statistics from old pictures to currently observed statistics. The whole process should be reproduced, the same film development process,...
This also reminds me of the story of the film manufacturer (was it Kodak?) detecting the start of man-made nuclear radiation levels. At first they thought something was wrong in their manufacturing process.
To improve the likelihood tests for the orbit parameters don't just include the Earth shadow, but also the Moon shadow.
Also, when filtering the imagery for "glints" was the only data used the consecutive imagery taken back then? I.e. are we certain it's not the other way around: a real object (star, comet,...) being obscured? I.e. there are 3 types of imagery to compare: the 2 consecutive images displaying a putative glint, and for example current imagery showing an actual star for example.
Comments
I don't believe these constitutes evidence of alien technology, but I do believe we should explain such observations (regardless of what it turns out to be: doctored data, natural phenomena,...)
It bothers me that for increasing distances the explanations requier ever bigger or stronger reflectors, but objects much closer to the telescope are not considered. A spec of dust temporarily illuminated (lightning? artificial light? etc.) or myriad of other explanations are not explored.
We should first try to figure out possible explanations by reasoning, but in a worst case scenario, if relating the sensitivity of the old telescope and modern observation proves too tenuous, there is always the last resort of reconstructing the telescope as it used to function, and have a modern telescope observe the same field of view. Then we could relate the statistics from old pictures to currently observed statistics. The whole process should be reproduced, the same film development process,...
This also reminds me of the story of the film manufacturer (was it Kodak?) detecting the start of man-made nuclear radiation levels. At first they thought something was wrong in their manufacturing process.
To improve the likelihood tests for the orbit parameters don't just include the Earth shadow, but also the Moon shadow.
Also, when filtering the imagery for "glints" was the only data used the consecutive imagery taken back then? I.e. are we certain it's not the other way around: a real object (star, comet,...) being obscured? I.e. there are 3 types of imagery to compare: the 2 consecutive images displaying a putative glint, and for example current imagery showing an actual star for example.