Transients in the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey

[John J.]

has Villarroel indicated at any point that they have reached out to the "custodians of the plates" to ask for access and if so have they reported the response?

I don't know. Maybe others do, but I don't remember Beatrix Villarroel suggesting this (which doesn't mean she hasn't).

I guess many other astronomers have done work based on/ informed by DSS and/or SSS, and probably the earlier glass POSS1 copies (perhaps more so pre-digitisation). If this is the case, it might be argued that those astronomers were not obliged to refer back to the original material (conjecture, maybe some were, I don't know). But I feel B.V. et al.'s transient papers are perhaps different; their findings are extraordinary and if accepted their implications are far-reaching. Hambly and Blair have raised what might be plausible concerns about reprographic artefacts, which might be tested by examining the POSS1 plates. Maybe other relevant insights would be made while examining the originals.

I don't know anything about access to the POSS1 plates. Even if allowed, a re-examination of those physical artefacts (presumably "in situ") might be a much more time-consuming, inconvenient and in effect expensive process than the study of the digitised material.

 

[jon_eir]

I don't think they have actually examined the original plates. However I think they would say they have shown that the transients can't be emulsion artifacts because their distribution has been shown to correlate with the Earth's shadow. But even that logic has been shown to have some questionable assumptions and tenuous rationale.

Snips from my post #72:

To me having not looked at these papers in 2 years nothing seems to have moved on. Like you said all the assumptions made around why these may not be plate artifact seem flawed either

1-address the issues the authors themselves highlighted in the 2021 paper
or
2-clearly state the problem or the assumptions being made on that issues in future papers

Completely pointless discussing/building on the initial work without this. Go make some plates again and do a study on that even to further the conversation.