Another day, another space telescope.   
      
   I ran across the WISE IR space telescope in some recent zine articles   
   about astronomers stitching together images for the whole sky over the   
   past ~20 y.   
      
   While the resulting stitched movie -- that's available at least on   
   Youtube -- has features that make it less than interesting for my   
   work, the actual raw observations are more interesting.   
      
   Unlike some other space telescope work WISE later renamed NEOWISE   
   assembles all the "rejects" into neat bundles that can be used for   
   interesting things.   
      
   The telescope was designed to look at 4 IR bands at bns of stars   
   in our neighbourhood but during the now decades-long mission mns   
   of images caught sight of other things. Initially (relatively) fast   
   moving objects seen in the frames are suspected to be known asteroids,   
   planets, comets, satellites (given WISE has a 500 km earth orbit, it's   
   mostly looking upward and will tend to see satellites passing over its   
   head), and other junk inside and outside the solar system.   
      
   If said objects don't seem to jive with any known planet or moon kept   
   on file at JPL the image is flagged anomalous and thrown into a   
   special bin.   
      
   Where people that might be looking for anomalous things might come   
   across it.   
      
   I'm setting up a basic display of the results so far at   
   .   
      
   The main density plot shows the first year of WISE's full-time   
   operation (2010) by time along the X axis. The numbers of Julian Days   
   that normally are used to tag space photos and astronomical   
   observations in general. The Y axis is the celestial latitude   
   ("declination") above and below the ecliptic. The color code is the   
   assigned "magnitude" of IR light in WISE's "w1" band (about 2 nm).   
      
   We see various features including box-like structures that are mostly   
   an artifact of the s/w that estimates missing values.  (Somewhat an   
   irony since we are looking at "trash data").   
      
   But the speckles in the image -- both dark and light -- contain   
   information about the :"anomalous objects" or camera artifacts that   
   were capture over 2010.   
      
   It turns out the presence of these speckles closely correlates with   
   ground-based observations over N America. Using the NUFORC data-set   
   I've created about 250 categories of UFO -- based on the reported   
   color, shape, location, time of day and even direction of travel of   
   the relevant object(s).   
      
   Unlike other space telescope data where many of the categories scored   
   very significant correlations with the light intensity data, with this   
   data only a very few but highly interesting categories seemed to be   
   related.   
      
   While no "shape" or "color" category of UFO sighting seemed to line up   
   with changes and spacial distribution of "anomalous IR" seen by WISE   
   during 2010, time-of-day (dawn, dusk, daytime and nighttime) were   
   highly correlated. Also highly correlated with Light UFO sightings in   
   general and certain other "light characteristics" including brightness   
   of said light were highly correlated.   
      
   In general only IR from certain directions was found to highly   
   correlate with the key UFO sightings categories.   
      
   Unlike some space telescopes that orbit at points far from earth, WISE   
   has a more or less fixed 500 km orbit. So anything it spots at e.g.   
   declination 60S is likely to be some object or aberration somehow   
   associated with the sky in the approx S polar region.   
      
   I am preparing a short posting on the results that will be posted in   
   the next day or 2.   
      
   In other space telescope news I've managed to stitch together various   
   full-frame images from other instruments and managed to spot some   
   anomalous "objects". But it also turns out that light-based telescopes   
   have many artifacts of their own and it's unclear whether the various   
   "blobs" that appear from time to time are actually something real or   
   just some artifact of the telescopes very complex optics. Some of the   
   "objects" and their antics seem quite interesting but at the same time   
   what seem like significant lens flares appear in the relevant full   
   frame images (albeit at such a low level that they have otherwise been   
   unflagged as anomalies by the telescope teams -- they apparently don't   
   interfere with the measurement of any light flux from stars in the   
   relevant frames so they may have gone un-remarked so far).   
      
   It remains that case, however, that averaged over large enough regions   
   of the sky visible to the relevant scopes the aggregate areas of   
   lighter-than-normal and darker-than-normal regions do highly correlate   
   with interesting UFO activity as seen on earth.   
      
   But so far no stitched-together images seems to show any sharp edge let   
   alone anything like a moving black triangle or cone.   
      
   --   
   Another UFO report comes out next week, some incidents still unexplained   
   ABC News, 28 Oct 2022 23:04Z   
   The enduring debate about whether UFOs are caused by extraterrestrial beings   
   will once again be front and center next week as ...   
      
   The French Government's Space Agency Just Hosted an International   
   Conference on UAP   
   The Debrief, 28 Oct 2022   
   The National Center for Space Studies (CNES) recently held its   
   long-awaited second CAIPAN conference, under the authority of the   
   Information and Study Group on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (GEIPAN),   
   on Oct 13th and 14th in Toulouse, France. The attendees, ranging   
   from the military to private researchers, represented visitors from 13   
   countries, several of whom presented what they believe to be among the   
   best data and technical analyses involving unidentified aerial   
   phenomena (UAP).   
   [Conf proceedings gave some good hints about what NASA is doing and   
   what evidence it has to look at.  NASA Science Mission Directorate's   
   Daniel Evans said among the broader body of UAP reports, there is a   
   "small fraction that appears to demonstrate extremely advanced   
   propulsion technology, and beyond that, UAPs most clearly pose a   
   safety of flight issue"].   
      
   Lake Monduran to host alien expedition   
   The Courier-Mail, 27 Oct 2022 07:02Z   
   Keen alien spotters may snag more than a barra when they join a UFO   
   specialist for a Lake Monduran expedition in hopes for an ...   
      
   NASA's UFO panel convenes to study unclassified sightings   
   Reuters on MSN.com, 25 Oct 2022 0:42Z   
   A first-of-its-kind panel organized by NASA opened a study on Mon   
   of what the govt calls "unidentified aerial ...   
   [The committee's function apparently is to define what or what not is   
   to be considered a UFO when e.g. military personnel or pilots make   
   reports to relevant organisations. Now that laws are almost in place   
   contractors and military personnel with high security clearance will   
   be able to report sightings of unusual things to the Pentagon's UFO   
   office. Until now it was a crime to report such things to anyone, even   
   other departments of the same organisation. However, exactly what shape   
   or color or flight characteristics UFO's have been observed to have is   
   a US state secret and routinely redacted from FOIA requests.  But as a   
   quasi military organisations NASA will be used to these myriad of   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)