Context· moderateTRN-E016
Construction of the public candidate catalogs (298,165 → 5,399)
- what the source states
- A Virtual Observatory search for POSS-I red sources absent from Pan-STARRS DR2 and Gaia EDR3 found 298,165 POSS-I-only sources; crossmatching and classification removed infrared counterparts, asteroids, variables, high-proper-motion stars, and 3,592 artifacts identified by comparison with the SuperCOSMOS digitization, leaving 5,399 unidentified transients in the public archive.
- what we infer
- The dataset-definition context every ensemble claim depends on: the contested statistics run not on this vetted 5,399 set but on a ~107,875-object working sample drawn from the broader workflow — a sample the discovery papers themselves describe as containing substantial false positives. Which rows count as "transients" is not a technicality here; it is where the Watters dispute lives.
- limitations
- The artifact vetting relies on cross-digitization comparison, which the copy genealogy (TRN-C007) shows cannot catch defects on the shared intermediate positive.