Per 
CAPTION-GOES-HERE
Item #: SCP-XXXX The HD-314811 Signal
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: [SCP-XXXX resides on a vintage Digital Equipment Corporation hard drive contained in a locked cabinet at Site XX. This drive is not to be connected to any computer. Any data can only be retrieved from this drive as blocks of binary and printed hard copy as hexadecimal.]
Description: [SCP-XXXX was a signal retrieved by the Verde Valley sub-milimeter array. This was a prototype radio telescope built in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, Caltech and several corporate sponsors including Digital Equipment Corporation.
The Verde Valley Array (VVA) consisted of eight 10 meter dishes spaced a kilometer apart in a line eight kilometers long all connected by fiber optic cable and focused on the same point in space. At the time this was the largest focal length attempted for sub-millimeter observations and had an advanced computer system for signal and data analysis. During the night, the VVA would scan a pre-planned region of the sky and then during the day, the computers would sort through the data.
All was going well until Oct. XX, 1979 after the radio-telescope had completed its nightly survey of a region of Sagittarius. The computers discovered a complex signal had been captured at Right Ascension 17 56 45.6889 Dec -25 13 55.405 which correlated to a magnitude 10 G0 class star.
At first the staff thought they had intercepted an encrypted burst transmission from an American or Soviet spy satellite. This was quickly dismissed after a discrete inquiry to the National Security Agency revealed that no known satellites were in that orbital space.
The signal was then passed through advanced signal processing software on a DEC Vax 11/780 series minicomputer. It proved to be a very complex signal using an unknown modulation and appeared to be compressed binary.
The next night at local dark, 2030 PST, when nightly operations were to resume, all computer access abruptly ceased. The system tracked all dishes of the VVA to RA 17 56 45.6889 Dec -25 13 55.405 and broadcast a five-minute pulse at maximum gain of complex digital data. After the broadcast, system control was restored and the Verde Valley Array proceeded on its automated survey.
By protocol, this incident was reported to the FBI Unusual Incidents Unit who quickly turned it over to the Foundation.
Corporate and University interest in the signal was intense but the signal had already taken over the computers of the VVA. It was deemed too dangerous to allow that code on a live system. It was read off in binary, changed to hexadecimal and printed out.
Caltech, DEC and the National Security Administration assigned a team of computer scientists to study the code. This project was code named ARCHER and run out of NAS facilities in Fort Meade, Maryland and ran for five years. Several breakthroughs were facilitated by the ARCHER project in algorithm design, data compression and, code-to-harware integration. The hard-copy of code is retained by the NSA for possible further study.
]
Addendum: [In 2009 HD-314811 was listed by planet hunters as a target candidate for study. In 2016 a Russian team using proper motion studies published a paper listing the star as having at least five planets with three in the "Goldilocks Zone".]
