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
Full Version: April Fools on the Arxiv?
That's a lot of effort for an April fool's joke!
A nice easter egg with the coordinates in the Conclusions section too!
A nice easter egg with the coordinates in the Conclusions section too!
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.
But i may have missed the point. ill admit i did not read entire thing.
QUOTE (Steve5304 @ Apr 1 2019, 07:34 AM) 
But i may have missed the point. ill admit i did not read entire thing.
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.
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.
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.
Very good! 
Gonna move this to Chit-Chat, though.
Gonna move this to Chit-Chat, though.
Testing here. A member said that they were unable to post to this topic; anybody see this?
QUOTE (nprev @ Apr 4 2019, 04:58 PM)
Testing here. A member said that they were unable to post to this topic; anybody see this?
I see it.
QUOTE (Ron Hobbs @ Apr 5 2019, 08:24 AM)
I see it.
I see it as well
Thank you, gentlemen. Think we're okay, then. 
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 EPOXI extended mission, ground based spectrographs (using reflected earthshine on the moon), and more recently using DSCOVR
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 EPOXI extended mission, ground based spectrographs (using reflected earthshine on the moon), and more recently using DSCOVR
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