Ascertain the nature of streaking detections within Earth’s shadow via parallax

Ascertain whether streaking detections observed within the Earth’s shadow in Zwicky Transient Facility 30-second exposures are meteors in Earth’s atmosphere or luminous objects moving in geocentric orbit by obtaining parallax-based range estimates to validate or refute distances inferred from angular speeds.

Background

The paper’s automated search (Sample B/IV) identified numerous streaking objects near the Earth’s shadow center. The authors outline several possible categories for such streaks: meteors, high-altitude aircraft lights, near-Earth asteroids located beyond the shadow cone, or light-emitting objects above the atmosphere moving within the shadow cone.

Because angular speeds alone cannot reliably distinguish between atmospheric meteors and luminous objects in geocentric orbit, the authors emphasize the need for parallax measurements to determine range and resolve the ambiguity. This motivates planned triangulation efforts (e.g., ExoProbe) to directly estimate distances and thereby classify these detections.