A ship approaching a sun will see the objects on the far side illuminated fully, but objects on the near side will be illuminated only on a thin edge, like a crescent moon, because they're looking at the 'back' side of the objects.
By sending out a pulse of light they could not just light up the ship-facing side of objects but also determine their precise location and velocity. Seems like something you'd want to do to not waste your thousand-year mission by accidentally colliding with a dark object.
The Wow! signal could be just such an event.
Aliens might use some type of scanning beam rather than a big flash, but I doubt we have the 1977 data to differentiate between a beam scanning our area and a solar-system-wide flash.
By sending out a pulse of light they could not just light up the ship-facing side of objects but also determine their precise location and velocity. Seems like something you'd want to do to not waste your thousand-year mission by accidentally colliding with a dark object.
The Wow! signal could be just such an event.
Aliens might use some type of scanning beam rather than a big flash, but I doubt we have the 1977 data to differentiate between a beam scanning our area and a solar-system-wide flash.