WISE, a mission that will find ALL the neighbours |
WISE, a mission that will find ALL the neighbours |
Aug 27 2009, 08:31 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
I'm used to reading excellent articles by Emily, but this one I found to be of truly extraordinary interest:
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00002070/ |
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Nov 28 2009, 10:48 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Thing is, what if we have a companion brown dwarf about a 0.5 LY out with an orbital period of 100,000 years or so? Finding such a thing should be easy with WISE, but it may take a decade or more to confirm that it's probably in orbit around the Sun, even longer to derive a decent ephemeris. The problem isn't frequency of observation, it's very low orbital velocities for distant objects.
New Horizons is still trying to work out ephemeris uncertainties for Pluto because it hasn't been observed for even half an orbit since its discovery. -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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