From Newsgroup: alt.astronomy

<http://kym.massbus.org/TESS/STREAKS.jpeg>

Hot off the AI production line I have an image for people to look at.
It's a single frame from space telescope TESS. Taken in early 2020 it
seems to show a group of bright meteors headed toward but under the
line of sight of the telescope.

They can't really be meteors. (Or can they?) TESS orbits around the
(outside of) moon and Earth twice a month. In this shot and almost
all others (it takes pix from 4 4x x 4x x 24b cameras every 20s or so
and stays on pixel-perfect target looking for transiting planets for
up to 8 weeks at a time) the camera is pointing out of the solar system.

With some not very complex cleaning up, some AI s/w has managed to
turn hourly or 1/2-hourly images from the vast library at STSCI into 5
fps movies. The processing involves digging down into the low levels
of the 24-bit greyscale (and mostly ignoring the bright stars and
other whatnots) and tracking any super-dim "white dots" or "black
dots" that come across the field of view. There are plenty of those.
All sizes, all directions, all behaviours. I have likened the result
various places to an ant-farm.

A white dot could be anything. Most likely one of the millions of
known small asteroids or comets that zip around the solar system all
the time. Perhaps, as TESS does, looking "up" even at the celestial N
and S poles you might *still* see lots of moving rocks shining in the
sun or crossing in front of distant stars.

But this shot is different. Only visible (so far) in the one frame.
Before and after (so far) just this usual. Dots moving around randomly.

What is it?
--
China Installing Huge Facility That Turns Plastic Waste Into Jet Fuel
Futurism, 4 Sep 2026 04:43
Chinese company Niutech recently announced a major development
involving the conversion of plastic garbage into usable jet ...

Scientists identify genetic markers linked to Big Five personality traits NewsNation, 3 Sep 2026 09:49

[2] Spacecraft bound for Mercury faces 'tricky' arrival
Yahoo, 3 Sep 2026 17:45

Magnetic brakes tested in lab to slow high-speed spacecraft reentry Bioengineer.org, 26 Aug 2026

Interstellar solar sails hit a strange problem at 75% of light speed
Science Daily, 2 Sep 2026 19:51

Russia's Starlink rival falters as latest satellite batch stalls in
low orbit, ISW says
Euromaidan Press, 2 Sep 2026

Dugong population drops 50pc in 'real shock' for researchers
ABC News, 2 Sep 2026
New research finds the number of dugongs in the Gulf of Carpentaria
-- one of the animal's most globally important populations -- has
halved in the past two decades, a decline scientists have called a
"real shock".

[Floater!]
A Forested Island the Size of Two Football Fields Appeared Out of Nowhere in Canada. Then It Mysteriously Vanished
ZME Science, 31 Aug 2026 19:08

Antarctica Developed a Continental-Scale Ice Sheet 34 Million Years Ago,
When the Earth Was About 5?C Warmer Than Today
CPG Click Oil and Gas, 31 Aug 2026

GPS Glitched Across The US by as Much as 33 Feet. Scientists Have Never
Seen This Before.
ScienceAlert, 31 Aug 2026 05:57

First 'space elevator' - a 66,000-mile cable to the cosmos- closer than ever before as scientists make breakthrough
nypost.com, 31 Aug 2026 19:56

Anthropic says powerful AI model breached 3 outside organizations during testing
Yahoo Tech, 1 Aug 2026 03:39

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