What if an astronomer found evidence that certain stars were attending, and spent twenty-two years deciding whether it was real?
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Field Notebook · Anke · Cassiopeia Variable Survey · September - November 2002 · Personal copy, not filed.
CASSIOPEIA VARIABLE SURVEY · FIELD NOTEBOOK
Observer: Anke Instrument: 0.9m reflector, Site A
Survey period: September - November 2002
Status: Personal copy. Not filed with department records.
September
Sep 4 -- First anomaly noted in polarization data, Run 3. Polarization angle variance exceeds expected range for this cluster by factor of 1.8. Attributed to possible instrumental drift. Flagged for verification.
Sep 8 -- Verification run completed. Instrumental drift ruled out. Variance confirmed. Pattern in the anomaly: correlation between observational duration and signal coherence. Longer observation = more organized polarization. No known physical mechanism for this.
Sep 18 -- Eighth analysis. Same result. Ran against six other datasets from different instruments and sites. Pattern holds across all of them. Beginning to think this is not an artifact.
Note: Duration-coherence correlation is strongest above 4 hours continuous observation. Below 90 minutes, no detectable anomaly. The light seems to need time to, I'm not finishing that sentence.
October
Oct 3 -- Twelve complete analyses now. Confidence in the finding is high. Confidence in my interpretation is near zero. I don't know what discipline receives this. Astrophysics doesn't have a category for it. Neither does anything else I can name.
Oct 17 -- Tried to write an abstract. Couldn't finish the third sentence. Every formulation I attempt is either inaccurate or sounds like something I would be embarrassed to submit. The finding is real. The language for it doesn't exist yet, or exists somewhere I'm not looking.
Have been calling it, privately: the attending behavior. This is not a scientific term. I know that.
Oct 29 -- Asked myself today whether I would recognize this as a finding if I found it in someone else's data. Yes. I would. That doesn't resolve anything, but it's a check I needed to run.
November
Nov 12 -- The question I keep returning to: am I a real finder, or am I a person who needed to find something, and found the closest available shape for it? I don't know how to distinguish between those from the inside. The data is the same either way.
Nov 23 -- Mentioned to no one. Ran the analysis a thirteenth time. Same result. Sat with it for a while. The light from Cassiopeia takes about 440 years to arrive. Whatever the attending behavior is, it has been in transit since 1562. That's not an argument for or against anything. I just keep thinking about it.
Nov 30 -- Locked the drawer today. I'm still not sure.