These are comparisons of deep, long exposure time survey images. They aren't imaging one star at an instant time, but entire fields of them over many minutes to hours, so:
> operator error
would effect the entire image. If it were damage to the film/sensor, scratches etc, it wouldn't look like a star point source with a star like point spread function.
> hardware error, noise
Digital sensors do add noise to an image, but it doesn't occur as bright point sources concentrated in a small area. noise can be removed through statistical analysis, dark frame subtraction, lucky imaging, etc. Dust on the lenses or mirrors aren't in the focal plane and don't resolve to points. Dust on film or sensors would block light, not produce it. Many exposures all over the sky quickly characterize the on sensor defects and other instrument specific information that can be removed from the data.
> anomalous near-earth objects
these are long exposures, if they are anomalous objects, they would have to have very slow apparent motion against the stellar background. satellites and planes would leave trails. balloons would drift with the wind. what would stay basically static through the entire long-exposure against the celestial sphere?
I appreciate your skepticism, I'm just taking the other side of the argument. Thoughts?
im with you. this is astrophysics: there are other lines of evidence to consider: like the missing stars sharing certain properties (color, velocity), suggesting an astrophysical explanation (remember it's not strange for stars to go away. whats new here is how)
> operator error
would effect the entire image. If it were damage to the film/sensor, scratches etc, it wouldn't look like a star point source with a star like point spread function.
> hardware error, noise
Digital sensors do add noise to an image, but it doesn't occur as bright point sources concentrated in a small area. noise can be removed through statistical analysis, dark frame subtraction, lucky imaging, etc. Dust on the lenses or mirrors aren't in the focal plane and don't resolve to points. Dust on film or sensors would block light, not produce it. Many exposures all over the sky quickly characterize the on sensor defects and other instrument specific information that can be removed from the data.
> anomalous near-earth objects
these are long exposures, if they are anomalous objects, they would have to have very slow apparent motion against the stellar background. satellites and planes would leave trails. balloons would drift with the wind. what would stay basically static through the entire long-exposure against the celestial sphere?
I appreciate your skepticism, I'm just taking the other side of the argument. Thoughts?