[X] My Assistant

[helvick]

Meanwhile, the fight over credit for the Planet 10 discovery has just gotten substantially nastier:

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/d...f-web-data.html

This is a very unfortunate development. I am concerned that it will actively discourage the sort of publication of earlyt raw data or planning information as part of public outreach efforts that the folks in this forum and amateurs around the world thrive on.

[Bob Shaw]

This is bearing more and more of a resemblance to that 30-year debate they had in Laputa over how long to boil a 3-minute egg.

Bruce:

Wasn't it armed rebellion, and wasn't it about whether it was the pointy end or the round end you ate first?

I think it's *good* to see astronomers going in circles - it sure beats them ellipse things hollow!

Perhaps they need 'A Modest Proposal' of their own...

Bob Shaw

[SFJCody]

Which Yahoo groups mailing list is that?
  Bob C.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mpml/

[Jyril]

Meanwhile, the fight over credit for the Planet 10 discovery has just gotten substantially nastier:

The discovery of 2003 EL61 is controversial, not the discovery of 2003 UB313. 2003 EL61 is the giant cigar-shaped KBO with a satellite.

[Rob Pinnegar]

The discovery of 2003 EL61 is controversial, not the discovery of 2003 UB313. 2003 EL61 is the giant cigar-shaped KBO with a satellite.

Not to nitpick too much, but only the circumstances of the discovery are worth of controversy, not the discovery itself. From what I've just seen in the contents of some of the links in this thread... well, after the 2003 UB313 drama, it seems pretty clear who is going to get the dubious distinction of being a footnote to astronomical history. You just can't expect anyone to take anything you say seriously after such a massive loss of credibility.

This was a really huge mistake for the Spanish group. NOBODY in their field will EVER forget about this. Time to get fitted for that millstone.

I guess they thought that they were going to get to be Urbain Leverrier. But now they're not even going to get to be John Couch Adams.

Phooey on them.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

Oops. I'm getting my UBs mixed up... At any rate, this event DID panic Brown into announcing the discovery of Planet 10 earlier than he'd planned, before somebody could pull a similar trick with it.

[abalone]

How about going to the source? Here is his homepage
http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~giacomo/noframes.html

Like to shar with you an email I received today from Giacomo Giampieri

Thank you for your interest in our research, and sorry for the delay in
answering your query.

The signal we studied in 1999 was very interesting and peculiar.
Unfortunately, a single flyby (assuming that the signal was real) does
not allow an unambiguous measure of the mass and the orbital parameter
of the alleged body. We could determine a rather wide range of possible
values for its position, but given that 7 years were already passed,
the uncertainty in the body's position was too big to allow for an
optical detection. Lacking an independent confirmation of the body
existence, we could not draw any final conclusion about the signal that
we saw.

I hope this answers your query.

Best regards,

Giacomo Giampieri

On 11 Sep 2005, at 04:32, Richard K. wrote:>
> Hi
> I have been reading with interest an old news article
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/460095.stm
> A few quotes from the article above
>
> “PN 10 experienced a gravitational deflection in December 1992.
> This story was reported by BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David
> Whitehouse on 28 September 1999”
> "On 8 December, 1992, when Pioneer was 8.4 billion km (5.2 billion
> miles) away, they saw that it had been deflected from its course for
> about 25 days."
>
> With Pioneer travelling at 15km/s it would indicate a big object
> would it not?
>
>
> Has anything come of this, it happened 13 years ago? Was it ever
> visually observed from Earth?
>
> "In a few weeks time, they are expected to be able to place an upper
> limit on the mass of the object and make predictions about its
> position. Early indications suggest it may be an object that is being
> ejected from our Solar System after encountering a major planet."
>
> I would very much appreciate any information
>
> Richard K
> Australia

[abalone]

How about going to the source? Here is his homepage
http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~giacomo/noframes.html

Like to share with you an email I received today from Giacomo Giampieri

Thank you for your interest in our research, and sorry for the delay in
answering your query.

The signal we studied in 1999 was very interesting and peculiar.
Unfortunately, a single flyby (assuming that the signal was real) does
not allow an unambiguous measure of the mass and the orbital parameter
of the alleged body. We could determine a rather wide range of possible
values for its position, but given that 7 years were already passed,
the uncertainty in the body's position was too big to allow for an
optical detection. Lacking an independent confirmation of the body
existence, we could not draw any final conclusion about the signal that
we saw.

I hope this answers your query.

Best regards,

Giacomo Giampieri

On 11 Sep 2005, at 04:32, Richard K. wrote:>
> Hi
> I have been reading with interest an old news article
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/460095.stm
> A few quotes from the article above
>
> “PN 10 experienced a gravitational deflection in December 1992.
> This story was reported by BBC News Online Science Editor Dr David
> Whitehouse on 28 September 1999”
> "On 8 December, 1992, when Pioneer was 8.4 billion km (5.2 billion
> miles) away, they saw that it had been deflected from its course for
> about 25 days."
>
> With Pioneer travelling at 15km/s it would indicate a big object
> would it not?
>
>
> Has anything come of this, it happened 13 years ago? Was it ever
> visually observed from Earth?
>
>
> I would very much appreciate any information
>
> Richard K
> Australia

[SFJCody]

HST observed 2003 UB313 on December 3 as part of a TNO satellite survey.

http://www.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/get-visit-status?10545

...and will do so again before the end of the week, in an attempt to measure the object's size.

http://www.stsci.edu/cgi-bin/get-proposal-info?10759

No news on IAU decision.

[tedstryk]

I notice it is with the ACS HRC. I wonder if it will be able to see surface detail (It will depend on whether or not it has large scale albedo variations).

[ljk4-1]

Paper: astro-ph/0512075

Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2005 07:44:54 GMT (148kb)

Title: Three-Body Affairs in the Outer Solar System

Authors: Yoko Funato, Junichiro Makino, Piet Hut, Eiichiro Kokubo, Daisuke
Kinoshita

Comments: Published in 2003 in the proceedings of the 35th Symposium on
Celestial Mechanics. 8 pages

Journal-ref: In Proceedings of the 35th Symposium on Celestial Mechanics, eds.
E. Kokubo, H. Arakida, and T. Yamamoto. Tokyo, Japan, 2003
\\
Recent observations (Burnes2002,Veillet2002,Margot2002a) have revealed an
unexpectedly high binary fraction among the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) that
populate the Kuiper Belt. The TNO binaries are strikingly different from
asteroid binaries in four respects (Veillet2002): their frequency is an order
of magnitude larger, the mass ratio of their components is closer to unity, and
their orbits are wider and highly eccentric. Two explanations have been
proposed for their formation, one assuming large numbers of massive bodies
(Weidenschilling2002), and one assuming large numbers of light bodies
(Goldreich2002). We argue that both assumptions are unwarranted, and we show
how TNO binaries can be produced from a modest number of intermediate-mass
bodies of the type predicted by the gravitational instability theory for the
formation of planetesimals (Goldreich and Ward1973). We start with a TNO binary
population similar to the asteroid binary population, but subsequently modified
by three-body exchange reactions, a process that is far more efficient in the
Kuiper belt, because of the much smaller tidal perturbations by the Sun. Our
mechanism can naturally account for all four characteristics that distinguish
TNO binaries from main-belt asteroid binaries.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0512075 , 148kb)

[SFJCody]

Discovery of a large Kuiper Belt object with an unusual orbit

[SFJCody]

Like I feared, that -0.4 value was a false alarm, it's back at 0.1:

2005 FY9 is back to -0.4 again.

K05F09Y -0.4 0.15 K0636 147.115 296.397 79.555 28.999 0.15503 45.70616 9 X

To be smaller than 2000km in diameter with this absolute magnitude requires an albedo >63%... it would be interesting to know what constraints the Spitzer non-detection puts on lower values of the albedo. This thing is either v. big or v. shiny.

[edstrick]

I know!... It's made of Tinfoil!

<adjusts his microweave tantalum-fiber whole-head skimask -- the latest in high-tech paranoid headwear>

[Bob Shaw]

Returning to the discussions regarding the classification of the more-or-less spherical wossisnames which orbit around other things (sometimes known as planets, or not, as the case may be), I came across one of the more, er, 'rational' discussions the other day, and it set me thinking. The point was made that you could divide planets into small worlds and big worlds, and the small worlds neatly divided into rocky worlds and ice worlds. The big chaps were, of course, the gas giants. So, for the small worlds, you have nice rocky guys close to the Sun, and ice chaps further out, no matter whether they orbit the Sun or something else. Then I thought of a fly in the ointment: there's actually an outer planetary rock world, with precious little in the way of water.

So, do we call Io a rock world, or a dehydrated ice world?

Just goes to show how rapidly even 'sensible' categories fray around the edges!

Bob Shaw