Telescope slewed autonomously to an unlocked position. Motor engaged without command input. The GoTo system logged a target: RA 04h17m, Dec +57°33′. This position is ANOM-07. I had not input this target. The log shows the slew command originated from the hand controller at 01:44:07. I was not touching the hand controller at 01:44:07. I was writing notes at my desk.
2020-09-08 · 02:22
The night of the first confirmed anomalous star positions. I was observing normally. At 02:22 I looked through the eyepiece at ANOM-07 and saw — the star appeared to have a structure. Not a point source. An extended object. Circular. I increased magnification. The object appeared to be an aperture — a circular opening, lit from behind by something orange. I observed it for eleven minutes. It did not change. I began to feel very cold. I went inside. When I returned, the star was a point source again.
2021-06-02 · 03:17
Photographing ANOM-07. Long exposure, 300 seconds. When I reviewed the image, the star was normal — a point source. But at the bottom-right corner of the frame, at the very edge of the field, there was something I did not photograph intentionally: a series of characters. The same script as the basement walls. In a long-exposure astronomical photograph. In the sky.
2022-02-13 · 23:59
The last observation I made before entering the basement. I had been observing ANOM-07 for forty minutes. At 23:59, the star went out. Not gradually — instantaneously. One moment it was there; the next it was not. I waited twenty minutes. At 00:22 it reappeared, exactly as before. The GoTo log shows that during the twenty-three minutes the star was absent, the telescope tracked nothing — it was pointed at empty space. The log also shows a second slew at 00:19:47, to an unlocked target it recorded only as: "source confirmed."
"The telescope did not malfunction. I had it serviced twice. Both technicians found nothing wrong. One of them asked me why the hand controller log contained a target labelled 'source confirmed' — I said I didn't know. He looked at me for a moment and said: 'This system shouldn't be able to store custom labels. The firmware doesn't support it.' I went home and looked in the basement manual. I don't own a basement manual. But I found one on the shelf." — C. Jiang