A glint in the eye: photographic plate archive searches for non-terrestrial artefacts

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to identify potential non-terrestrial artefacts in old photographic plates by detecting multiple transient reflections, helping to set upper limits on reflective debris in geosynchronous Earth orbits.

Contribution

It introduces a statistical approach to distinguish real NTAs from false positives in photographic data, and applies this to historical plates to constrain NTA prevalence.

Findings

Detection of multiple transients indicates potential NTAs with high significance.

Methodology can set upper limits on reflective debris in GEOs.

Statistical analysis reduces false positive identifications.

Abstract

In this paper, we present a simple strategy to identify Non-Terrestrial artefacts \citep[NTAs;][]{Kopparapu} 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 $10 \ast 10$ 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.