Three block sign tests do not detect 25-hour sidebands of the 23.1-minute signal in five TESS visits to WD 1054-226

The tested data do not give a significant detection of the specified sidebands of the known 23.1-minute signal of WD 1054-226. We use 80,273 accepted samples from five public 120-second TESS light curves in 2019 to 2026. Each visit has quadratic baselines in six-hour bins and a free sine and cosine at 62.346970426 cycles/day. We add terms at the carrier frequency plus and minus 24/25.0213147 cycles/day. These sidebands describe a sinusoidal change in complex amplitude with the long cycle. The 20 added coefficients reduce the total weighted squared error by 22.63056. For 1999 residual block sign draws, block widths of 0.25, 1, and 2 days give tail estimates of 0.1965, 0.2560, 0.2845. No separate visit passes the comparison across five visits at the 0.05 level. All planned baseline, flux, and frequency checks also give no detection. In conditional injections, a 50% pure amplitude change in all visits is found in 98.2 to 99.4% of trials. The tests assume independent, sign-symmetric residual blocks and fixed frequencies. The result does not exclude weaker changes, changes at other periods, or higher harmonics. It does not identify a planet or a physical source. The package preserves original FITS files, repeat archive hashes, code, trial arrays, figures, and reproduction instructions.

WD 1054-226 · TIC 415714190 · TESS · white dwarf · planetary debris · sidebands · amplitude modulation · null result · injection recovery · reproducible astronomy