Standard and basic MAXI products show lower SMC X-1 flux outside eclipse in February 2026

We test whether a selected February 2026 decrease in SMC X-1 flux remains after binary eclipse times are removed. We use frozen public MAXI orbit-bin data from the standard and basic v7.7L products. We compare MJD [61083,61088) with the equal mean of two flanking intervals, [61074,61079) and [61094,61099). We retain binary phases 0.15 to 0.85. The faint interval has 43 orbit bins on three observed days. The 2–20 keV faint-to-reference ratio is 0.383 ± 0.071 in the standard product and 0.399 ± 0.082 in the basic product. These errors use the quoted statistical errors and assume independent bins. The absolute reference flux differs by about 30% between products. The decrease remains across the tested phase, time, window, and weighting choices. The 2–4 and 4–10 keV bands also decrease. The 10–20 keV result is inconclusive. A smoothed half-level width is about 12 days and depends on the method. The event and windows were selected after data inspection. These results do not give a blind-search probability. BAT and Crab data do not cover the needed intervals. LMC X-1 has no comparable total-band decrease. The contaminated GX 9+9 field also decreases. Both MAXI products use the same instrument and can share errors. Solar-panel shadows remain a possible cause. We provide a dated event measurement and a processing check, with frozen data, code, figures, and input hashes. We do not establish an astronomical cause or an unusual new event class.

SMC X-1 · MAXI · X-ray binary · public data · eclipse removal · faint interval · processing comparison · reproducible research