unusual light variations seen by space telescope between earth and moon #2

[MrPosti...@kymhorsell.com]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
- We have produced 3 movies of the TESS data watching 1000s of stars
for planetary transits.
- The first movie shows the variation of average brightness of the
primary pixels representing each star. The movie shows many regions
of sky seem to brighten and darken together. Some bright or dark lines of
10x10 deg tiles appear and disappear suddenly. At times areas twinkle
synchronously, which seems unusual. There are also single tiles that
darken or brighten and remain dark or bright for hours or days. These
are not so unusual -- they may represent flaring or transit of a
planet. Each tile is the average of several randomly-assigned stars
but if one of them varies in brightness markedly the average will also
show that.
- The 2nd movie shows the same calculation but for "background pixels"
around the main target pixel for each star. We expect to see more
anomalous activity given the tiles are averaged over 100s of pixels
and not just several. And that's what we see. We also note bright
events are more common than the first movie but dark events seem less
common. This is understandable given we are no longer seeing
objects block the central pixel of the star and pixels away from the star
may not be normally that bright to start with.
- The 3rd movie, still coming off the pipeline, shows
quality-controlled and lightly processed versions of the central pixel
flux. These data are meant for use by researchers looking for
planetary transits. We note the processing done by the TESS group
apparently achieves its aim of removing noise. We see in our movie the
position for each planet seem to be surrounded by a dark tile -- an
indication the processing by the TESS group actually is trying to
suppress light pollution from each planet, the sun, the moon and the earth.
We also note there is much less anomalous brightening and darkening. The
processing has eliminated a good part of the activity we are trying to observe.


The s/w has re-computed its movies using parts of the TESS dataset other
than the pixels representing "stars of interest" for planetary transits.

The TESS project has targeted about 5000 bright or close stars for
close-up examination for planetary transits. Unlike the Kepler
telescope TESS is mostly looking for single transits so doesn't follow
particular stars for many months or years. But similar to Kepler its
output files consist of "FITS files" that contain several data-streams
extracted from the raw ~2000x2000 images.

The primary output is the flux as measured by the relevant CCD array
at the pixel selected to be the "target pixel" for the given star.
Deep-diving users of the system can fish around and select whichever
pixels they determine to best measure the brightness of the star at
any time, but the default output in the FITS files is the value used
in my current crunching.

There are additional streams of data that might be useful for
planetary transits and also for us here -- looking for things that
might be moving around between the earth and the moon.

The first secondary output is a "background" value that shows the
average over several pixels up, down, left and right of the main
target pixel. For transits it may be possible to see a little dot away
from the target star that represents something interesting. For us
here the background is just a larger area to examine for funny bright
and dark areas that may move from region to region in the sky TESS is
looking at over a given period.

Finally, there is a "cleaned up" central pixel coded as PDCFLUX. This
is meant to be a quality controlled and noise-reduced version of the
central pixel flux and may be worth a look given we have looked at the
main central pixel data anyway.

The s/w has crunched through the 13000 frames for each 10x10 deg
section of the sky (the TESS image itself is around 14x14 deg which
each pixel around 26 arc seconds across) for the primary pixel flux
and also the background area around the primary pixel for each
star. I've only downloaded 3000 FITS files so far -- must over 1/2 the
available data. Data is still being gathered and some of the later
data in my download is only a couple months old.

The movie of the sky as determined by the central flux of several
stars allocated to each 10x10 deg tile is at
<kymhorsell.com/UFO/movie2.mp4>. As described before, it shows some
odd features including twinkling over regions of the sky that seem in
excess of the variation or extent that should be seen with average
stars. It's as if most stars in each section of the sky are seeing
planetary transits "all the time" when we otherwise know they are
kinda rare.

But the more unusual features are the bright and dark regions that
pop up from time to time suggesting large numbers of stars across
e.g. 100x100 deg regions of the sky dim or brighten roughly together.
This should not be possible. Such patterns suggest something is coming
between that central star pixel and the camera -- either "somethings"
brighter and sometimes much brighter than normal variations for each
star, or much dimmer than normal variations.

Some bright objects might be mundane objects like comets. Some "dark"
objects might even be small asteroids or meteors that are moving in
the earth-moon region. But their number seems excessive and their
movements don't seem consistent with objects in orbit around the sun.
They seem equally likely to move from left to right as right to left,
for example.

But view the movie and see what you think. We already know that the
brightness (central pixel flux) of many regions of sky vary
statistically very much like some types of UFO activity as reported in
the NUFORC database. As covered elsewhere, we can even determine that
time-shifted UFO activity matches even better brightness variations as
seen by TESS for many stars advanced by several days and also retarded
by several days. It's as if TESS sees a group of stars brighten or
dim, several days later that corresponds to some change in report UFO
activity, then several days after that there is another change in star
brightness in the same part of the sky.

The new parts of the data show similar and somewhat consistent patterns.

The "background" data has been through the same pipeline as the
central pixel fluxes and the movie is here:
<kymhorsell.com/UFO/moviebkg.mp4>.

Given this data looks at more pixels we "see more". Variation over
large regions of the sky is rampant. Large regions brighten and darken
together at different times. It's like the first movie, but on steroids.

The 3rd movie is still coming off the pipeline but there will be
preliminary versions updated every couple hrs for the next day or so.
That movie is at <kymhorsell.com/UFO/moviepdc.mp4>.

The dataset is a "cleaned up" version of the central flux data. It's
meant to reduced noise and allow processing of the resulting values
looking for planetary transits. And the preliminary movie shows the
processing is entirely successful. Unfortunately, it is going the
wrong way for those of us looking for objects between the earth and
the moon. The processing apparently treats them as random noise and
and brightness variations of central pixels that have nothing to do
with the star are reduced in intensity.

One sign the PDC movie is going the wrong way can be see around the
positions of the planets that in all movies are generally marked by
letters. E.g. "S" represents the position of the sun and "m" the moon
as seen from Mauna Kea. This is not exactly the standard frame used by
the TESS dataset but is reasonably close esp for density plots only
accurate to 5 deg anyway. The "e" represents an even rougher position
of the earth as seen from TESS (i.e. different from the ref frames of
the others). This was originally meant to determine whether the earth
was possibly causing some of the brightness anomalies seen in the
central pixels. Turns out, it wasn't. :)

If we look closely at the planets in the PDC plot we see each planet
is generally surrounded by a tile that is slightly darker than normal.

We can take that to mean the PDC processing is trying to ensure no
light from the planet concerned will interfere with the detection of
planetary transits. But the processing may be a smidgen too eager and
perhaps suppress slightly too much the suspected planetary light pollution.

The darker tiles around planets confirm the PDC data is probably not
what we should be looking at to see whether unusual things are being
seen by TESS coming between target stars and the telescope.

--
"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
- Marie Curie

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