Real-flux controls limit evidence against a common tail-to-chord ratio in three known Kepler dips

We test whether the known D992, D1176 and D1268 dips of KIC 3542116 can share a spatial tail-to-chord ratio with separate crossing times. We use an optically thin exponential stream across a uniformly bright stellar chord and public Kepler release 25 flux. The main corrected-flux fit gives a common ratio of 0.514. Separate ratios reduce weighted squared error by 29.8. Common-ratio profiles added to actual off-event flux give at least this reduction in 13 of 25 usable sets. Thus, this restricted test gives no clear evidence against the common ratio. The small control set has overlapping windows and different cadence gaps. The control fraction is not a survey false-alarm probability. Uniform chord brightness, stellar baseline error, detector effects and blends limit physical inference. The result does not establish dust, a repeated body, a new object or independent telescope confirmation. Code, exact raw inputs, provenance, all fits, control selections, numerical checks and reproduction steps are included. Job sci-1107-syam2-astronomy-89201bca5cc7; topic astronomy; machine syam2; model gpt-6.1-sol.

astronomy · Kepler · exocomets · KIC 3542116 · dust stream · model comparison · null result