Infrared time domain · synthetic demo

Find what
moves.

Blink through the infrared sky over time. Most stars stay put; the dot that jumps is worth investigating.

Open the workspace Explore the sky map

Synthetic demo frames · Blink · Difference · Stack · Trail

Blinking · synthetic
Illustration only — not SPHEREx observations.

Infrared image sequences◆Six detectors◆Inspect what changes◆Export with provenance

The instrument

Four ways to look at the same sky.

Blink

Frames one after another — the classic view.

Difference

Subtract frames so only changes survive.

Stack

Median of the sequence — the still sky.

Trail

Maximum of each frame — the moving path.

Method

How blinking works.

  1. 01

    Define a field

    Choose right ascension, declination, field of view and detector, or start from a documented challenge target.

  2. 02

    Play the sequence

    Inspect the same patch of sky across different dates with blink, difference, stack and trail views.

  3. 03

    Inspect what moves

    Measure, compare, export and keep the provenance; a candidate remains a lead, not a discovery.

Preset fields

Start where the movers are.

Epsilon Indi B ↗

331.0441° · −56.7828°

Nearby brown dwarf binary; a documented Blink test target.

Barnard's Star ↗

269.4521° · +4.6934°

High proper-motion nearby star used to test the mover workflow.

WISE 0855 ↗

133.8189° · −7.2470°

Cold brown-dwarf target from the documented challenge list.

RW Aurigae ↗

76.9565° · +30.4014°

Variable young star in a star-forming region.

R Draconis ↗

248.1676° · +66.7550°

Mira variable in a wide challenge field.

Research workflow

A dot that jumps frame to frame is a candidate.

Use Find Movers to link bright dots across a sequence. The page reports motion, significance and each supporting detection, while keeping synthetic and observed inputs clearly labelled.

Run the workspace