Cosmic ray artifacts in STEREO / SDO images

[MonkeeSage]

On X I have seen a user posting the same 4 images several times over the last few days. They are images from the STEREO and SDO solar observation satellites and they show blobs and streaks that were being interpreted as anomalous with the implication being they are related to aliens. After seeing them posted several times I finally replied that they are cosmic ray artifacts and linked to the STEREO Learning Center page on cosmic ray artifacts: https://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/artifacts/artifacts_cosmic_rays.shtml.

The person who found the artifacts was none to happy with my diagnosis and told me to keep studying. When pressed for why they think the artifacts were not caused by cosmic rays they told me to study the literature and the images and write a paper with findings and get back to them. I would normally consider such a flippant request as a way of saying "scram", but I thought would be a good chance to learn about how the images are processed.

Claude code was able to help me find information about the processing done on the images, find technical details about the sensors, perform the analysis of the artifacts and create a write up. It turns out that most of the published images have a "de-spiking" algorithm applied to them after collection and before publishing that removes cosmic rays and other noise (there are thousands of them per frame), and the pixels that are changed are recorded along with their original raw values. That means it's possible to "re-spike" them to recover the original data. The de-spiking algorithm is very good and removes 96-99% of artifacts in my samples. The leftover bits are what get interpreted as alien spaceships.

Here are the artifacts from the published images (scaled up with nearest-neighbor sampling):

They look pretty alien. But comparing the re-spiked images it becomes clear they are very likely to be caused by high energy particle hits on the sensors.

And to really put the nail in the alien spaceship coffin, physical objects can be entirely ruled out on a technical level.

They are sharper than the telescope can image. Anything in the sky is seen through the telescope optics, which blur a point to about 1.5 arcsec, roughly 2.5 AIA pixels [12]. In A2, A4a andA4b the brightness falls from 11,900–16,900 DN to under 210 DN between one pixel and the next. Only charge deposited directly in the detector can have edges that sharp.

So he got his paper, and now I have something to point people to beyond just the cosmic ray artifact page.

There's a thread from a few years ago about artifacts in an image from SDO so I figured this write up might be interesting to folks here.

The repo is below (the write up is the README), and a rendered PDF version is attached.

https://github.com/MonkeeSage/stereo-sdo-artifacts

 

[flarkey]

Source of the speculation: https://solarsuspicions.com/


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7r9Eh_wY_s

Mission:

To offer NASA archived images of solar-centric objects for consideration that "technosignatures" do exist, are actively operating near our sun.

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http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/data.html

http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

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[JMartJr]

So he got his paper...

Presumably, having been given what he requested, he has modified his views in light of new evidence?

 

[John J.]

The person who found the artifacts was none to happy with my diagnosis and told me to keep studying.

Did they suggest any useful books or papers?

 

[john.phil]

The person who found the artifacts was none to happy with my diagnosis and told me to keep studying. When pressed for why they think the artifacts were not caused by cosmic rays they told me to study the literature and the images and write a paper with findings and get back to them.

It might be useful to show them the production of artefacts in real time due to highly energetic particles hitting the sensor:


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duBjcd8V0yg

Spoiler: 'Alien invasion' (00:18)

 

[Ann K]

The person who found the artifacts was none to happy with my diagnosis and told me to keep studying. When pressed for why they think the artifacts were not caused by cosmic rays they told me to study the literature and the images and write a paper with findings and get back to them.

Cosmic rays have been seen in a number of the photos taken on Mars, and unfortunately there are non-scientists who closely scan every anomalous photo from Mars in hopes of being able to "prove" some preconceived notion they have.

I once posted (but can no longer locate) an explanatory letter from the man who created the cameras on the Mars rover "Curiosity". The ones on Mars present themselves as either dark spots or white, depending on when the cosmic ray came through during the rolling shutter process.

 

[john.phil]

Cosmic rays have been seen in a number of the photos taken on Mars, and unfortunately there are non-scientists who closely scan every anomalous photo from Mars in hopes of being able to "prove" some preconceived notion they have.

I once posted (but can no longer locate) an explanatory letter from the man who created the cameras on the Mars rover "Curiosity". The ones on Mars present themselves as either dark spots or white, depending on when the cosmic ray came through during the rolling shutter process.

I used Gemini to locate it instantly, the prompt was a copy of the phrase quoted above: "Ann K once posted (but can no longer locate) an explanatory letter (...)"

Gemini said:

The letter you are looking for was shared by Metabunk user Ann K (whose daughter is a geologist on the Mars rover team). It details an email response from Justin Maki, the Engineering Camera Lead for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) mission. [1, 2]

The core takeaway is that cosmic rays typically appear as bright spots, but they present themselves as dark spots when they hit the detector during a bias (shutter) frame acquisition, which is then subtracted from the primary image.

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/something-on-a-nasa-photo-from-mars-cosmic-ray.12718/post-282429

Ann K said:

Email from Justin Maki, forwarded to me by Linda Kah. Justin is the engineering camera lead for the Mars Science Laboratory mission and a member of the MSL Science Camera Team.

Hi Linda –

That is a textbook cosmic ray!

In this particular case the cosmic ray appears dark rather than bright because the cosmic ray hit the detector during a bias (shutter) frame acquisition. The shutter image is subtracted from the image of interest, producing a low pixel DN (digital number) value, i.e., a dark smudge.

Note that dark smudges are also sometimes due to physical debris on the detector (e.g., WATSON and MAHLI). But in this particular case it is definitely a cosmic ray.

Cosmic rays come in all sort of styles – most of them are due to protons, i.e., ionized hydrogen. The length and shape of the cosmic ray streaks depend on the angle at which the cosmic ray hits the detector. Cosmic rays are fascinating btw.

Cosmic ray hits are actually pretty common – most go unnoticed, unless they appear in the sky.

Examples attached, and links below:
Cosmic ray examples (mostly nighttime images):

https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05551
https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/pia06337
https://www.space.com/mars-insight-meteor-photographs-cosmic-rays.html

Hope this helps!