The word "ships" is a bit of a stretch to say the least without some really good evidence.
What's their "scientific" evidence? In the synopsis they say: "Adobe colour system" which... umm... how can I put this politely... they looked at the pictures in Photoshop!
The calibrated scientific instrument that they used to quantitively gather evidence for visiting aliens is the eyedropper tool.[3]
This is what I'm talking about. There's no evidence, just people promoting themselves to make a buck, get published, make insurance claims, or just have a laugh. Call me when they have an in-focus picture that's not just a splotch a few pixels across.[2]
[1] There is no special requirement, peer review, or any of the actual scientific process required for publishing a pre-print on arXiv. It's just a dumping ground for students, and is about as authoritative as GitHub.
[2] They have their photos in the paper. Go have a look, they're hilarious! These could be anything, such as airliners, satellites, or whatever your imagination can come up with: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.11215.pdf
[3] This feels like kicking a puppy, but I have to point out that in all PC colour systems, including Adobe RGB are non-linear and require gamma correction to obtain scientifically-relevant linear light intensity levels. The Photoshop eyedropper tool specifically does not do this, returning the encoded non-linear values. The paper mentions none of this, yet they use the RGB values directly in formulas to estimate metrics like distance. They also mention "RGB spectrum" as if that means anything without the context of the camera filters, sensor response curves, etc...
I was curious, so I found another paper by the original authors and the color correction is more carefully considered, since they seem to take into account the sensor response too [0].
Even if they're using RAW photos, the response curve is still non-linear because the individual pixels "saturate" as they get closer to the maximum exposure. This shifts colours, because a bright colourful source will saturate the pixels of the matching colour first, and then the other colours a bit later. A bright yellow meteor trail will saturate red and green, and then blue.
Their entire method and conclusion all hinges on analysing the relative intensities of RGB colours of photos of very bright meteor trails.
These guys are so unscientific it's almost a parody of science. It reads like a bunch of high school students doing "science" with their dad's camera, and then a kind professor submits their homework to arXiv to make them feel like they're Just Like The Big Boys.
Having said that, there is some amazing real scientific research being done with CotS camera equipment!
Examples:
https://astronomytechnologytoday.com/2018/06/28/miniwasp-par...
https://petapixel.com/2022/07/25/telescope-made-from-multipl...
https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1561833
That last one is a beautiful example of how to do science right, with detailed calibration data and characterisation of every aberration in the system.
Sensors don't have a color space. It's a transformation applied in the camera software. Unfortunately no commercially available camera either exposes using the sensor data output itself, leading to often considerable non linearity between the measurable output values and the actual exposure. This is applied to the raw file for exposure and post processing raw conversion. You need to analyse the non de-bayered raw files directly to assess what's happening in the captured data.
It's a similar problem to "jamming" in military radar systems. You might be half-blind while jammed, but you're aware that you are being jammed in the same way that you won't miss someone shining a torch in your face.
Multiple cameras across a wide range of wavelengths (UV-Visible-IR) would be fantastically difficult to hide from, for a range of parameters such as UFO size, altitude, speed, etc... To the point where it starts to become physically impossible, irrespective of technology level.
For example, various militaries have looked into tracking high-altitude spy planes via the disturbance they make in the air. You can camouflage the plane all you want, but you can't stop air from existing.
