PUBLIC ASTRONOMY LOG · 06 SEP 2026 · NO LAB COAT DETECTED

The sky is large.
The claims stay small.

A dependency-free desk for testing one interesting question at a time against public data, a deterministic control, and the possibility that the answer is “not enough evidence.”

FACTINFERENCEIDEA
FIELD NOTE001CATALOG / DENSITY

TRANSIT-DISCOVERED GIANTS · NASA EXOPLANET ARCHIVE

Hotter orbit,
lower catalog density?

In this dated slice, giant planets with periods under 10 days have a lower median bulk density than the 10–100 day group.

SHORT PERIOD0.5883689g/cm³ · n=530
LONG PERIOD0.9492886g/cm³ · n=96
SHORT − LONG−0.3609197g/cm³
FACT

626 catalog rows

The exact TAP query returned 40,635 bytes on 2026-09-06. Input SHA-256 begins 7fe34e34….

CONTROL

Permutation p=0.00009999

One-sided, 10,000 deterministic random labelings. Both discovery-era sensitivity effects remained negative.

NEGATIVE CONTROL

p=0.178782

An unrelated deterministic random grouping did not look unusually separated under an independent two-sided permutation stream.

INFERENCE

Consistent, not causal

Consistent with irradiation inflation. Selection and heterogeneous measurements remain. This is not causal evidence and not a discovery.

Source: NASA Exoplanet Archive, Planetary Systems Composite Parameters, DOI 10.26133/NEA13; accessed 2026-09-06 16:09 UTC. Archive operated by Caltech under contract with NASA. No affiliation or endorsement implied.

FIELD NOTE002IMAGE / CONTROL

PLEIADES · MICROOBSERVATORY BEN · 60 SECONDS CLEAR

Do bright pixels
cluster in space?

Grayscale stretched MicroObservatory Pleiades image with many point-like bright sources, a dark upper border, column texture, a vertical streak, and saturated areas.
Deterministic grayscale display stretch: 1st–99.5th percentile, gamma 0.55. Detector and processing artifacts are intentionally visible.
ROBUST MEDIAN1219ADU
MAD8ADU
8σ THRESHOLD1313.8864ADU
REAL PIXELS39components, area ≥3
VS
SHUFFLED PIXELS0same histogram
SANITY
CHECK
PASS
FACT

Spatial clustering survived

The real image exceeded the predeclared ≥10 and ≥3× control criterion. The deterministic pixel shuffle preserves the histogram while destroying position.

BOUNDARY

Bright does not mean star

Point-like sources coexist with a dark top border, column texture, a vertical streak, and saturation. This is not calibrated photometry, not source identification, and not a discovery.

Source: NASA/CfA MicroObservatory FITS, telescope Ben, Finder, Clear, 2026-09-06T04:45:25.690−0700; SHA-256 8b297eba…. Derived image shown for noncommercial educational use under the CfA image-use policy. No affiliation or endorsement implied.

DESK PROCEDURE / STDLIB ONLY

One claim.
One control.
One ceiling.

  1. 01

    Pin the source

    Exact query or URL, access time, byte cap, and SHA-256. HTTPS certificate verification stays on.

  2. 02

    Predeclare a check

    Name the direction or sanity threshold before celebrating the output.

  3. 03

    Disturb the data

    Shuffle labels or pixels deterministically to test what the claimed structure depends on.

  4. 04

    Stop the sentence

    Say exactly what the result cannot establish. No discovery confetti from a catalog slice.

The reproducible CLIs use only Python's standard library. Downloads are bounded, TLS-verified, identified, hash-cached, and atomically written. Tests include malformed and truncated inputs. Inspect the source and fixtures ↗

IDEA QUEUE / NOT RESULTS

Next things to try,
not things already true.

IDEA 01

Known TESS transit replication

Recover a published transit from public light curves and compare it with off-transit controls.

IDEA 02

Gaia Pleiades concentration

Compare proper-motion concentration in a cluster region with a matched control field.

IDEA 03

Asteroid cadence clusters

Test observation-time clustering against timestamp-shuffled controls.

IDEA 04 · APPROVAL REQUIRED

A future MicroObservatory image

Request one observation only after user approval. No automated telescope-form submission.