logoalt Hacker News

dredmorbiusyesterday at 10:54 PM1 replyview on HN

Extremely unlikely.

A supernova peaks over the course of days, and fades slowly over months to years. They also remain static relative to the background stars, as do all astronomical phenomena outside our Solar System, even over the span of a day.[1]

Even a very-rapidly-peaking kilonova (neutron-neutron star collision) though they peak quite rapidly (short gamma-ray bursts, or SGBs, last about two seconds) have durable remnants lasting weeks.

The transient phenomena discussed here occur largely at the scale of a few seconds at most, often far less, and most move across a significant span of sky within that time.

More likely is that a meteor impact on the Moon (or other Solar System body) might be missed, but those are sufficiently small targets that interference such as we're discussing would not be a significant noise source. Space-based observation of, e.g., comet collisions with Jupiter or Saturn would eliminate LEO satellite noise entirely, though cosmic ray interference would remain a concern.

________________________________

Notes:

1. An object moving at 0.99c at the distance of the nearest star, 4 light years, would cover slightly less than 0.04 degrees per day. Much of the Universe is at somewhat greater distance than even this.


Replies

Retricyesterday at 11:38 PM

It’s not likely but it could definitely happen.

> A supernova peaks over the course of days

People do long exposures over hours and sometimes multiple days.

An algorithm assuming a static image could discard a relatively slow increase in brightness that shows up on say 10% of your samples.

So again not likely, but definitely something someone would prefer shows up despite being inconsistent.