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Posted by: antipode Apr 1 2019, 04:30 AM

Didn't really know where to put this at first, but it really should go here despite the title.

TESS Photometric Mapping of a Terrestrial Planet in the Habitable Zone: Detection of Clouds, Oceans, and Continents
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.12182.pdf

P

Posted by: Explorer1 Apr 1 2019, 04:37 AM

That's a lot of effort for an April fool's joke!
A nice easter egg with the coordinates in the Conclusions section too!

Posted by: Steve5304 Apr 1 2019, 03:34 PM

Looks like an april fools to me. "Sol D" being earth itself...

But i may have missed the point. ill admit i did not read entire thing.

Posted by: mcaplinger Apr 1 2019, 04:43 PM

I think this is an actual data analysis using stray light from the Earth as seen in the TESS data. More or less pointless, but real.

I'll admit I didn't read the whole thing in detail either. If it's a joke it seems to be very long but not that funny.

Posted by: JRehling Apr 1 2019, 05:53 PM

This reminds me of the (much briefer) joke that David Grinspoon put into the title of a column once, something like, "Scientists discover earth-sized planet orbiting sunlike star!" and it was (an otherwise serious column) about Venus.

Posted by: Xerxes Apr 1 2019, 05:59 PM

I thought it was pretty funny, and also a neat science result, since they seem to be able to detect the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern oceans. Certainly one of the most startling discoveries since IceCube identified a potential satellite of Sol d.

Posted by: nprev Apr 2 2019, 04:16 AM

Very good! Gonna move this to Chit-Chat, though.

Posted by: nprev Apr 4 2019, 11:58 PM

Testing here. A member said that they were unable to post to this topic; anybody see this?

Posted by: Ron Hobbs Apr 5 2019, 12:24 AM

I see it.

Posted by: PaulH51 Apr 5 2019, 12:54 AM

I see it as well

Posted by: nprev Apr 5 2019, 01:35 AM

Thank you, gentlemen. Think we're okay, then.

Posted by: dtolman Apr 5 2019, 07:51 PM

Hopefully third time is the charm getting this post to show up on the site...

The article as posted may appear as a joke - but using Earth as a proxy to provide "ground truth" of how exo-planet Earth analogues would appear is a subject of real research - and as such this does constitute legitimate and useful research. As this article pointed out there are real pitfalls that scientists may not be aware of - for example depending on how the observation campaign is run may make a large impact in how the planet appears in the data (such as their inabiltity to distinguish in the instruments between temporary albedo features - clouds - and permanent landforms over short observation periods).

Previous campaigns to do research into this include Deep Impact's https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/ast.2011.0642, https://www.astrobio.net/alien-life/seeing-earth-exoplanet-signs-life-visible/ (using reflected earthshine on the moon), and more recently https://aasnova.org/2018/06/12/an-epic-view-of-the-earth-as-an-exoplanet/