Now that Pluto is no longer considered a planet, the way is open to name all these other objects which have been held up by the issue of whether Pluto was a planet or not. Foremost among these is Xena, or 2003 UB313, the Kuiper Belt object larger than Pluto that helped fire this controversy. Today I heard that Xena has been given a name (Xena was a temporary nickname). It is now officially called Eris.
I had not heard of the goddess Eris before. I have read some descriptions of her, which say she is the goddess of discord; her Roman name is Discordia. According to one reference, she was the daughter of Zeus and Hera, and the twin sister of Ares (Roman: Mars). She is known for stirring up trouble among people, who would then fight wars (Ares' domain) to settle their issues. In particular, she was not invited to the wedding of Paris. So she threw an apple at Paris, and it said "to the fairest" (of Athena, Aphrodite, and Hestia). He threw the apple to Aphrodite, and that started the war in which Paris' nation, Troy, was defeated.
Brown, Eris' discoverer, said that was the prefect name for the dwarf planet, because it caused so much Strife (Eris' son) among astronomers deciding if Pluto was a planet. Eris has a satellite, which was temporarily called Gabrielle, Xena's sidekick. Its official name is Dysnomia, daughter of Eris and goddess of lawlessness.
These names are going to cause some discord (Eris causing Eris?). There are some who will say the astronomers took away the names Xena and Gabrielle, representing heroines who do good for people, and replace them with Eris and Dysnomia, agents of discord and evil. Maybe some fundamentalists will say that astronomers are evil.
In general, Eris seems to be a decent name for the farthest body yet discovered in the Solar System (we want to keep discord away, don't we?). To me, it seems too close to Eros, the god of love and the name of an asteroid. Now there are so many asteroids that there are going to be similar names all over the place, but we are talking here about the largest asteroid ever discovered (Eris) and the first asteroid ever to have had a man-made object land on it (Eros). To me these asteroids are too important to give them confusing names. We are now going to have to pronounce them Er's (with the "i" hardly audible) and Air Oase (with equal accents on each syllable).
Now that Pluto has been declared an asteroid, it was given a number, 134340. To me this number is far too huge and inconspicuous to give to an asteroid that is the second largest in the solar system, has more satellites than any other, and for a long time was considered a planet. I am recommending to the International Astronomical Union that Pluto be given the number 0. This number has never been assigned, because people seem to feel that the first of anything should be numbered 1 (so Ceres was numbered 1). To me, in this list, 0 means firster than the first, and so I feel it is the most appropriate number for Pluto. Eris was given the number 136199. Again such a huge number for the largest asteroid ever discovered. But it was discovered only recently.
Pluto is given a number and Xena has been given the permanent name Eris, so now I wonder about the Easter Bunny (2005 FY9) and Santa (2003 EL61). Of course these can't be the permanent names; in fact, Santa is already the name of asteroid 1288. They are temporary names. I expected the IAU to give permanent names to these objects, the third and fourth largest asteroids known, but so far they haven't. So I am waiting for them to name them. According to guidelines, they should be named for creation deities, so I am suggesting these names: Baiame (Australian aborigine), Chernobog (Slavic), and Haashch (Navajo).
Friday, September 15, 2006
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Grackles Galore
We have a birdfeeder and some bird houses and baths in our back yard. We notice a lot of birds at the feeder, especially at migrating times in the spring and fall. So far this summer only some of the local birds, such as mourning doves and cardinals, have shown up, together with hordes of squirrels. We have also had hummingbirds, and these birds have flown all over the place, annoying the other birds that cross its territory near our hummingbird feeder.
As of late we have been getting huge flocks of grackles, with as many as 40 grackles in our back yard. They eat up the food and suet quickly, and I had to replace the food in the feeder. But I let them feed, since these flocks come mixed with other species. Somoe of these are starlings, which I could care less about. But last spring we saw two red-winged blackbirds among the grackles. For that reason, we let the grackles feed.
They are skittish birds. The slightest movement, even indoors, will scare them all off in a big swoosh. I have even heard of a case where cardinals and other songbirds come in just after the grackles have been scared away, so they can get a chance at getting the food before the grackles come back.
Things are changing all right. Now I hear of nighthawks in the area, including the Diamond, where the Richmond Braves play baseball. A huge flock of them showed up at the Diamond, and this got reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Later on, more birds will come in as migration proceeds, and the snowbirds will arrive - the first sign of winter.
As of late we have been getting huge flocks of grackles, with as many as 40 grackles in our back yard. They eat up the food and suet quickly, and I had to replace the food in the feeder. But I let them feed, since these flocks come mixed with other species. Somoe of these are starlings, which I could care less about. But last spring we saw two red-winged blackbirds among the grackles. For that reason, we let the grackles feed.
They are skittish birds. The slightest movement, even indoors, will scare them all off in a big swoosh. I have even heard of a case where cardinals and other songbirds come in just after the grackles have been scared away, so they can get a chance at getting the food before the grackles come back.
Things are changing all right. Now I hear of nighthawks in the area, including the Diamond, where the Richmond Braves play baseball. A huge flock of them showed up at the Diamond, and this got reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Later on, more birds will come in as migration proceeds, and the snowbirds will arrive - the first sign of winter.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Pluto Officially No Longer a Planet
The decision came from the International Astrophysical Union (IAU) today. Pluto is no longer considered a planet. This was a ruling that I had hoped for a long time they would make.
A week ago they came up with an unworkable proposal. This would keep the "traditional" nine planets and include Charon (so that Pluto would be a double planet), Ceres (the largest asteroid), and Xena (a Kuiper Belt object like Pluto, but somewhat larger) as planets. Their definition of planet was that it orbit the Sun, and that it is massive enough for gravity to have made it into a sphere. This was unworkable because it would have made too many planets. It's not just Pluto and Xena out there beyond Neptune. There are also the Easter Bunny, Santa, Orcus, Ixion, Varuna, Quaoar, 2002 FX25, Sedna and a host of other discovered and undiscovered objects in the Kuiper Belt larger than Ceres. All of these are almost certainly spheres, and they circle the Sun. So they would be planets. There would be a lot of planets out there. Boy would there ever be a lot of planets. Michael Brown of Cal Tech, the discoverer of Xena, said there would be 53 of them. Ask our high students to remember 53 planets.
As a result, a storm of protest arose in the astronomical community at the convention of the IAU in Prague, Czech Republic, which is considering the matter. Today an alternative resolution was considered and passed. It maintained the two requirements for a planet mentioned above, and it added a third one: that it "cleared the orbit of other objects". To me this means that it is more massive than everything else in its orbit put together. This means that Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are planets; in fact, each has a "sphere of influence" - the orbit in which it moves. It also means that Pluto is not a planet (and neither is Charon), since its orbit goes all over the place in the Kuiper Belt and even overlaps Neptune's orbit. Ceres is not a planet, because the sphere in which Ceres is in is the asteroid belt and all the other asteroids put together is much larger than Ceres - in fact, it is about the mass of the Moon. So now there are only eight planets.
Actually, "planet" is a term used by us humans, and the only thing that has changed is what we call these objects in the Solar System. The objects have not changed themselves. To me, this entire debate is as much etymology as astronomy. People seem to behave as though "planet" was an inherent property of these objects, and that Pluto is a planet because it is a planet, and that it is that way in all our astronomical books, and there is a cartoon dog named after him and so forth. People are even getting attached emotionally to the far distant world. They say, "Poor Pluto", when actually the planet is not alive and could not care less. The astrologers take anything called a planet and proclaim influences of them over us, which somehow did not exist before. No, the entire thing was selecting words so that astronomers can logically refer to these objects. They have acted correctly in defining planets in terms of spheres of influence and in saying that Pluto is not a planet.
This should settle a few things now. For example, we have objects named Xena (who is not a mythological hero but a creation of today's hyperculture), Santa, and the Easter Bunny. These objects will now get permanent names. The rule is that if its orbital period is about 247 years, it is named after an underworld figure, else it is named after a creation deity. Xena would be renamed for a creation deity, and I hope it gets named Baiame, for the native Australian deity. Popular sentiment would select Persephone or Prosepina, the wife of Pluto or Hades. But these are names of asteroids. Kore is a possible name - Persephone's name as the Queen of the Underworld, and it is not the name of an asteroid. The Easter Bunny and Santa would also get official names.
But questions remain open for the future. For example, how about two Earth-sized worlds that orbit in overlapping orbits? Maybe such does not exist long; that eventually they would collide, as the Earth did with Theia to form the Moon. And shouldn't the Asteroid Belt (Mars-Jupiter) and the Kuiper Belt be declared something like planets, since they are zones or spheres of influence? Perhaps call these belts. There is one belt for each planet, and also the MJ Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt. The Solar System has 10 belts.
Will the definition be viable in the future? The MJ asteroid belt is associated with the terrestrial planets, the largest of which is Earth, at about 8,000 miles in diameter. Ceres is 480 miles in diameter, so the ratio is about 17 to 1. In the same way the Kuiper Belt seems to be associated with the giant gas planets, the largest of which is Jupiter, at 88,000 miles. 1/17 of this is about 5200 miles, somewhat larger than Mars. This makes me think there is a really huge undiscovered Kuiper Belt object out there with a diameter of 5,200 miles. If such is discovered I would think it would have be called a planet, even though it would not dominate its orbit. But for now, the IAU has presented us with a reasonable definition of planet.
A week ago they came up with an unworkable proposal. This would keep the "traditional" nine planets and include Charon (so that Pluto would be a double planet), Ceres (the largest asteroid), and Xena (a Kuiper Belt object like Pluto, but somewhat larger) as planets. Their definition of planet was that it orbit the Sun, and that it is massive enough for gravity to have made it into a sphere. This was unworkable because it would have made too many planets. It's not just Pluto and Xena out there beyond Neptune. There are also the Easter Bunny, Santa, Orcus, Ixion, Varuna, Quaoar, 2002 FX25, Sedna and a host of other discovered and undiscovered objects in the Kuiper Belt larger than Ceres. All of these are almost certainly spheres, and they circle the Sun. So they would be planets. There would be a lot of planets out there. Boy would there ever be a lot of planets. Michael Brown of Cal Tech, the discoverer of Xena, said there would be 53 of them. Ask our high students to remember 53 planets.
As a result, a storm of protest arose in the astronomical community at the convention of the IAU in Prague, Czech Republic, which is considering the matter. Today an alternative resolution was considered and passed. It maintained the two requirements for a planet mentioned above, and it added a third one: that it "cleared the orbit of other objects". To me this means that it is more massive than everything else in its orbit put together. This means that Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are planets; in fact, each has a "sphere of influence" - the orbit in which it moves. It also means that Pluto is not a planet (and neither is Charon), since its orbit goes all over the place in the Kuiper Belt and even overlaps Neptune's orbit. Ceres is not a planet, because the sphere in which Ceres is in is the asteroid belt and all the other asteroids put together is much larger than Ceres - in fact, it is about the mass of the Moon. So now there are only eight planets.
Actually, "planet" is a term used by us humans, and the only thing that has changed is what we call these objects in the Solar System. The objects have not changed themselves. To me, this entire debate is as much etymology as astronomy. People seem to behave as though "planet" was an inherent property of these objects, and that Pluto is a planet because it is a planet, and that it is that way in all our astronomical books, and there is a cartoon dog named after him and so forth. People are even getting attached emotionally to the far distant world. They say, "Poor Pluto", when actually the planet is not alive and could not care less. The astrologers take anything called a planet and proclaim influences of them over us, which somehow did not exist before. No, the entire thing was selecting words so that astronomers can logically refer to these objects. They have acted correctly in defining planets in terms of spheres of influence and in saying that Pluto is not a planet.
This should settle a few things now. For example, we have objects named Xena (who is not a mythological hero but a creation of today's hyperculture), Santa, and the Easter Bunny. These objects will now get permanent names. The rule is that if its orbital period is about 247 years, it is named after an underworld figure, else it is named after a creation deity. Xena would be renamed for a creation deity, and I hope it gets named Baiame, for the native Australian deity. Popular sentiment would select Persephone or Prosepina, the wife of Pluto or Hades. But these are names of asteroids. Kore is a possible name - Persephone's name as the Queen of the Underworld, and it is not the name of an asteroid. The Easter Bunny and Santa would also get official names.
But questions remain open for the future. For example, how about two Earth-sized worlds that orbit in overlapping orbits? Maybe such does not exist long; that eventually they would collide, as the Earth did with Theia to form the Moon. And shouldn't the Asteroid Belt (Mars-Jupiter) and the Kuiper Belt be declared something like planets, since they are zones or spheres of influence? Perhaps call these belts. There is one belt for each planet, and also the MJ Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt. The Solar System has 10 belts.
Will the definition be viable in the future? The MJ asteroid belt is associated with the terrestrial planets, the largest of which is Earth, at about 8,000 miles in diameter. Ceres is 480 miles in diameter, so the ratio is about 17 to 1. In the same way the Kuiper Belt seems to be associated with the giant gas planets, the largest of which is Jupiter, at 88,000 miles. 1/17 of this is about 5200 miles, somewhat larger than Mars. This makes me think there is a really huge undiscovered Kuiper Belt object out there with a diameter of 5,200 miles. If such is discovered I would think it would have be called a planet, even though it would not dominate its orbit. But for now, the IAU has presented us with a reasonable definition of planet.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Astronomical Passitarounds
Astronomy is a unique field among the sciences. It is one where the objects of study are readily in our view - look up at night. This allows amateurs to get into the act and make important astronomical discoveries just like the professionals. We can't get direct access to these objects, however, because they are so far away, from a few hundred thousand miles to billions of light years away. So astronomical truths should be readily accessible to all.
But maybe not. Recently I have received two passitarounds concerning astronomy. Passitarounds are these items floating around on the Internet, usually as email. Some examples include getting help for a lost Indian girl, viruses "threatening" our computers which turn out to be hoaxesm, and pictures of cute kitties. All of these except the kittens are false hoaxes, however. What concerns me is that I have received two fo these concerning astronomy.
The first concerns an event that happened on 2003 August 27. At that point, Mars was in opposition to the Earth, so it was closest to the Earth, and it was up all night long. However, this was a special opposition, since Mars was also in an especially close perihelion, or closest approach, to the Sun. And further, it was closer than at any time for a few thousand years (but it will be even closer in 2287). Someone typed up a passitaround in 2003 and sent it off, hoping to inform as many people about this event. However, he did not put a year on his announcement. As a result, it keeps coming up over and over again, every year as August 27 approaches. The passitaround gets altered, even to the extent that the planet will appear as big as the full moon, perhaps motivated by the large picture of Mars through a telescope that appears in the passitaround. This gives people the impression that an especially close encounter will occur on 2004 August 27, 2005 August 27, 2006 August 27, 2007 August 27, and so forth and so on. On none of these dates was Mars especially close. In fact, Mars will be too close to the Sun to see on 2006 August 27. I received this passitaround no less than four times!! I got it once in 2003, when it expressed the truth. I got it in 2004, from someone I knew at church. I got it in 2006, first from a Toastmaster and then from another church friend. I told these people that this event already happened. It does nothing for the science of astronomy for this out of date passitaround to keep floating around.
I got another one just yesterday. It has the inscription " A scene you will probably never get to see, so take a moment and enjoy God at work at the North Pole. This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point. And you also see the sun below the moon. An amazing photo and not one easily duplicated." and features a picture of an enormous smile-like thin crescent Moon hovering just over a much smaller Sun near the horizon over an icy landscape including some water. I looked at this and could tell it was not for real. The Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon, but it is also 400 times farther away, so the two of them appear the same size in the sky. In this picture, the Moon appeared much larger than the Sun. Further, the Moon and Sun, both on the ecliptic, were one on top of each other. This implies that the zodiac or ecliptic goes overhead in the scene, but that never happens at the North Pole - the ecliptic rises to only 23 degrees below and above the horizon there. So I looked around and found the Scopes reference in the above hyperlink. I was shocked to learn that this was a work of art. I think it was an exceptionally good one, evoking all kinds of emotions in me. Someone simply swiped this piece of art, disregarding any copyrights, and threw it into a passitaround and started it circulating.
If you see either of these passitarounds, don't pass it around again! Instead, tell the people involved that the polar scene can't happen, that Mars can't be as large as the Full Moon or will approach as close as it did in 2003, and tell them to stop it there. In general, disregard passitarounds. They can spread a lot of untruth and hurt the cause of science in a demon and mainline-religion-dominated world.
But maybe not. Recently I have received two passitarounds concerning astronomy. Passitarounds are these items floating around on the Internet, usually as email. Some examples include getting help for a lost Indian girl, viruses "threatening" our computers which turn out to be hoaxesm, and pictures of cute kitties. All of these except the kittens are false hoaxes, however. What concerns me is that I have received two fo these concerning astronomy.
The first concerns an event that happened on 2003 August 27. At that point, Mars was in opposition to the Earth, so it was closest to the Earth, and it was up all night long. However, this was a special opposition, since Mars was also in an especially close perihelion, or closest approach, to the Sun. And further, it was closer than at any time for a few thousand years (but it will be even closer in 2287). Someone typed up a passitaround in 2003 and sent it off, hoping to inform as many people about this event. However, he did not put a year on his announcement. As a result, it keeps coming up over and over again, every year as August 27 approaches. The passitaround gets altered, even to the extent that the planet will appear as big as the full moon, perhaps motivated by the large picture of Mars through a telescope that appears in the passitaround. This gives people the impression that an especially close encounter will occur on 2004 August 27, 2005 August 27, 2006 August 27, 2007 August 27, and so forth and so on. On none of these dates was Mars especially close. In fact, Mars will be too close to the Sun to see on 2006 August 27. I received this passitaround no less than four times!! I got it once in 2003, when it expressed the truth. I got it in 2004, from someone I knew at church. I got it in 2006, first from a Toastmaster and then from another church friend. I told these people that this event already happened. It does nothing for the science of astronomy for this out of date passitaround to keep floating around.
I got another one just yesterday. It has the inscription " A scene you will probably never get to see, so take a moment and enjoy God at work at the North Pole. This is the sunset at the North Pole with the moon at its closest point. And you also see the sun below the moon. An amazing photo and not one easily duplicated." and features a picture of an enormous smile-like thin crescent Moon hovering just over a much smaller Sun near the horizon over an icy landscape including some water. I looked at this and could tell it was not for real. The Sun is 400 times wider than the Moon, but it is also 400 times farther away, so the two of them appear the same size in the sky. In this picture, the Moon appeared much larger than the Sun. Further, the Moon and Sun, both on the ecliptic, were one on top of each other. This implies that the zodiac or ecliptic goes overhead in the scene, but that never happens at the North Pole - the ecliptic rises to only 23 degrees below and above the horizon there. So I looked around and found the Scopes reference in the above hyperlink. I was shocked to learn that this was a work of art. I think it was an exceptionally good one, evoking all kinds of emotions in me. Someone simply swiped this piece of art, disregarding any copyrights, and threw it into a passitaround and started it circulating.
If you see either of these passitarounds, don't pass it around again! Instead, tell the people involved that the polar scene can't happen, that Mars can't be as large as the Full Moon or will approach as close as it did in 2003, and tell them to stop it there. In general, disregard passitarounds. They can spread a lot of untruth and hurt the cause of science in a demon and mainline-religion-dominated world.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Telescopes Will be Better in 2050
At the latest meeting of the Richmond Astronomical Society, someone brought up an article in the BBC on the Internet that said that telescopes will be worthless by 2050. The article maintains that global warming, which increases cloudiness, and jet contrails will combine to form a haze that ground telescopes will not be able to penetrate.
Global warming is a serious problem. However, I think that telescopes will be better in 2050. This is because of peak oil. Professor Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy maintains that air traffic will increase, increasing the number of jet contrails, which produce artificial cirrostratus clouds that obscure the sky. He says, "You get these contrails from the jets. The rate at which they're expanding in terms of their fractional cover of the stratosphere is so large that if predictions are right, in 40 years it won't be worth having telescopes on Earth anymore - it's that soon."
No, Professor Gilmore. You did not take Peak Oil into consideration. There may not be any jet planes flying in 2050 to make contrails with. These planes require fuel, and you assume that jet travel is just simply goinjg to increase without limit. Instead, oil production will peak, probably between 2008 and 2010, and decline from that point on. By 2040, only a fraction of today's oil will be produced. From this must come the fuel for jet aircraft. It follows that far fewer aircraft will be flying, unless some way can be found of powering aircraft other than with petroleum products. So actually, the contrail situation will be better.
Global warming will wane, also. It is fueled by fossil fuels, and these will decline after 2010, and so will global warming. There may be some temporary increase due to coal, but if clean, renewable alternative fuels are developed, these will dominate in 2050, meaning a sharp decrease in CO2 emission. Further, energy prices are sure to rise dramatically, due to peak oil, and so people will invent new means of conserving electricity, and hence generation of power from power plants. These may include such things as a device that will turn out lights unless people are in the room. If these proliferates, the cities will turn dark at night, and the stars will come out.
All of this means much better viewing in 2050 than now. Don't move or take apart Lick, Wilson, or Palomar Observatories! These telescopes will be much more useful functioning under beautifully starry skies in the year 2050. That is, unless peak oil and an energy crunch prevents power for clock drives and equipment from coming into the observatories.
Global warming is a serious problem. However, I think that telescopes will be better in 2050. This is because of peak oil. Professor Gerry Gilmore of Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy maintains that air traffic will increase, increasing the number of jet contrails, which produce artificial cirrostratus clouds that obscure the sky. He says, "You get these contrails from the jets. The rate at which they're expanding in terms of their fractional cover of the stratosphere is so large that if predictions are right, in 40 years it won't be worth having telescopes on Earth anymore - it's that soon."
No, Professor Gilmore. You did not take Peak Oil into consideration. There may not be any jet planes flying in 2050 to make contrails with. These planes require fuel, and you assume that jet travel is just simply goinjg to increase without limit. Instead, oil production will peak, probably between 2008 and 2010, and decline from that point on. By 2040, only a fraction of today's oil will be produced. From this must come the fuel for jet aircraft. It follows that far fewer aircraft will be flying, unless some way can be found of powering aircraft other than with petroleum products. So actually, the contrail situation will be better.
Global warming will wane, also. It is fueled by fossil fuels, and these will decline after 2010, and so will global warming. There may be some temporary increase due to coal, but if clean, renewable alternative fuels are developed, these will dominate in 2050, meaning a sharp decrease in CO2 emission. Further, energy prices are sure to rise dramatically, due to peak oil, and so people will invent new means of conserving electricity, and hence generation of power from power plants. These may include such things as a device that will turn out lights unless people are in the room. If these proliferates, the cities will turn dark at night, and the stars will come out.
All of this means much better viewing in 2050 than now. Don't move or take apart Lick, Wilson, or Palomar Observatories! These telescopes will be much more useful functioning under beautifully starry skies in the year 2050. That is, unless peak oil and an energy crunch prevents power for clock drives and equipment from coming into the observatories.
Monday, February 20, 2006
A New Planet Has Been Found?
Recently a Kuiper Belt Object named 2005 UB313 has been discovered. It is about 3 times the distance of Pluto from the Sun, but gets closer in about 200 years. It has an orbital period of 556 years or so, and its diameter is about 1800 miles. This makes it bigger than Pluto, so all over the place in the media, headlines about finding a tenth planet have sprouted. But is it, and Pluto for that matter, really a planet?
People had been so expecting and getting excited about a ninth planet at the beginning of the 20th century so that when a large Kuiper Belt object was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, it was instantaneously proclaimed a Planet! They thought it was as big as Uranus, and they called it Pluto. Further observations, including occultations that did not take place, showed it to be much smaller, maybe as big as the Earth, no maybe as big as Mars, no maybe big as Mercury; they really did not know for sure. Then Harrington discovered in 1980 that it had a satellite Charon. Now when two bodies are found in orbit around each other, the mass of both can be computed fairly accurately. Astronomers did that, and found that Pluto was only 1500 miles across. The United States is bigger than that. So that put into serious question whether Pluto should be considered a planet. It has a mass of only 13 yottagrams, compared to 5960 yottagrams (or 5.96 xonagrams) for the Earth, 330 yottagrams for Mercury, 148 yottagrams for Ganymede, 89 yottagrams for Io, and 74 yottagrams for our own Moon. Is the Moon a planet? It is on the borderline. And Pluto is much smaller than that.
It instead was the biggest Kuiper Belt object, a group of large objects outside the orbit of Neptune. Many large Kuiper Belt objects have been discovered, including Varuna, 600 miles across, Charon, 600 miles, Quaoar, 900 miles, Sedna, 1100 miles, closing in on the radius of Pluto. But still Pluto was the largest of the Kuiper Belt objects, so some still considered it a planet.
But now they've done it. Pluto is no longer even the biggest Kuiper Belt object. There is one bigger, namely 2005 UB313
The newly discovered object is about 1.5 times wider than Pluto and therefore 4.5 times more massive, probably. And it STILL is not a planet. Not when its mass is only about 58 yottagrams. If we called the new object a planet, then surely we must call the Moon one. So definitely now, Pluto is NOT a planet.
But the media and the IAU are going to call it a planet, since they call Pluto a planet. The problem with this is that eventually there are going to be too many planets - more in the Kuiper Belt than elsewhere. Eventually they will give up on this, just like they did with calling Ceres, Pallas, and so forth planets near the beginning of the 19th century. They will take planet status away from both 2005 UB313 and Pluto. Now the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt has one member, namely Ceres, that is much bigger than the rest, and the rest go down rather uniformly from there, from Vesta and Pallas on down. I think that Pluto, 2005 UB313, Quaoar, Orcus, and so forth are the Vestas and Pallases of the Kuiper Belt, and The Big One has still yet to be discovered. By analogy with the Mars-Jupiter asteroids, I would estimate that The Big One, when found, will have a mass approaching 1 xonagram (1,000 yottagrams), and be between the Moon and Mars in size. That definitely would be a planet. But I predict only one of these big kahunahs.
In other words, eventually I think the Solar System will be shown to have 9 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and not Pluto, but Planet X, a Kuiper Belt object approaching Mars in size. I could be wrong. There might be a bunch of equal-sized objects in the Kuiper Belt, with no planets. But the example of Ceres seems to show to me that there is a Big One yet to be discovered.
Another matter is the naming of 2005 UB313. Mike Brown, the discoverer, first said he was gong to call it Lila, after a daughter, then he said he was going to call it Xena, after the female warrior, and it got spread all over the Internet, but not the main news media. But I don't think that will likely be its name. It just doesn't fit. Hercules, Jupiter, Ceres and so forth are deities or superpeople that are thousands of years old. Xena is only 10 years old, the modern creation of Hollywood to provide an ancient female superhero for girls to aspire to. More appropriate would be to name it after a god of some religion, and underworld gods seem to predominate out here in the dank recesses of the outer Solar System.
So I would like to propose this name: Baiame. Baiame is the God of the Australian Aborigines, specifically the God of Death, and a well-known legend involving the Southern Cross features Baiame. I urge the IAU to select this name for the object, and I am hoping that Australian aborigines will support me on this name for this far distant asteroid. As far as being a planet, in my opinion, it is too small, and so is Pluto. Until something bigger is found, the Solar System will be known to have eight planets.
2005/08/02
People had been so expecting and getting excited about a ninth planet at the beginning of the 20th century so that when a large Kuiper Belt object was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, it was instantaneously proclaimed a Planet! They thought it was as big as Uranus, and they called it Pluto. Further observations, including occultations that did not take place, showed it to be much smaller, maybe as big as the Earth, no maybe as big as Mars, no maybe big as Mercury; they really did not know for sure. Then Harrington discovered in 1980 that it had a satellite Charon. Now when two bodies are found in orbit around each other, the mass of both can be computed fairly accurately. Astronomers did that, and found that Pluto was only 1500 miles across. The United States is bigger than that. So that put into serious question whether Pluto should be considered a planet. It has a mass of only 13 yottagrams, compared to 5960 yottagrams (or 5.96 xonagrams) for the Earth, 330 yottagrams for Mercury, 148 yottagrams for Ganymede, 89 yottagrams for Io, and 74 yottagrams for our own Moon. Is the Moon a planet? It is on the borderline. And Pluto is much smaller than that.
It instead was the biggest Kuiper Belt object, a group of large objects outside the orbit of Neptune. Many large Kuiper Belt objects have been discovered, including Varuna, 600 miles across, Charon, 600 miles, Quaoar, 900 miles, Sedna, 1100 miles, closing in on the radius of Pluto. But still Pluto was the largest of the Kuiper Belt objects, so some still considered it a planet.
But now they've done it. Pluto is no longer even the biggest Kuiper Belt object. There is one bigger, namely 2005 UB313
The newly discovered object is about 1.5 times wider than Pluto and therefore 4.5 times more massive, probably. And it STILL is not a planet. Not when its mass is only about 58 yottagrams. If we called the new object a planet, then surely we must call the Moon one. So definitely now, Pluto is NOT a planet.
But the media and the IAU are going to call it a planet, since they call Pluto a planet. The problem with this is that eventually there are going to be too many planets - more in the Kuiper Belt than elsewhere. Eventually they will give up on this, just like they did with calling Ceres, Pallas, and so forth planets near the beginning of the 19th century. They will take planet status away from both 2005 UB313 and Pluto. Now the Mars-Jupiter asteroid belt has one member, namely Ceres, that is much bigger than the rest, and the rest go down rather uniformly from there, from Vesta and Pallas on down. I think that Pluto, 2005 UB313, Quaoar, Orcus, and so forth are the Vestas and Pallases of the Kuiper Belt, and The Big One has still yet to be discovered. By analogy with the Mars-Jupiter asteroids, I would estimate that The Big One, when found, will have a mass approaching 1 xonagram (1,000 yottagrams), and be between the Moon and Mars in size. That definitely would be a planet. But I predict only one of these big kahunahs.
In other words, eventually I think the Solar System will be shown to have 9 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and not Pluto, but Planet X, a Kuiper Belt object approaching Mars in size. I could be wrong. There might be a bunch of equal-sized objects in the Kuiper Belt, with no planets. But the example of Ceres seems to show to me that there is a Big One yet to be discovered.
Another matter is the naming of 2005 UB313. Mike Brown, the discoverer, first said he was gong to call it Lila, after a daughter, then he said he was going to call it Xena, after the female warrior, and it got spread all over the Internet, but not the main news media. But I don't think that will likely be its name. It just doesn't fit. Hercules, Jupiter, Ceres and so forth are deities or superpeople that are thousands of years old. Xena is only 10 years old, the modern creation of Hollywood to provide an ancient female superhero for girls to aspire to. More appropriate would be to name it after a god of some religion, and underworld gods seem to predominate out here in the dank recesses of the outer Solar System.
So I would like to propose this name: Baiame. Baiame is the God of the Australian Aborigines, specifically the God of Death, and a well-known legend involving the Southern Cross features Baiame. I urge the IAU to select this name for the object, and I am hoping that Australian aborigines will support me on this name for this far distant asteroid. As far as being a planet, in my opinion, it is too small, and so is Pluto. Until something bigger is found, the Solar System will be known to have eight planets.
2005/08/02
Deep Impact is Coming!
Comets are all the time threatening the Earth with devastating collisions. In 1996, Comet Hyakutake came so close that its tail spread nearly across the sky; it missed by about 9 million miles. Shoemaker-Levy 9 didn't just threaten to crash into a planet, it actually did so. Pow! Pow! Pow! the fragments of this comet hit Jupiter, giving the planet a case of the measles for a few days.
So now we are getting revenge against the comets. NASA decided that it would go to the comet and crash into it first. The comet is Comet Tempel 1, a moderately faint periodic comet. The NASA probe will release a projectile that will crash into the comet, causing a big crater there, and throwing all sorts of comet stuff into space, where the rest of the probe can relay information of it back to Earth. By that method, we may find out what is in the comet and how it got there.
Will we see it in our skies? We certainly will. But not here on the East Coast, as the comet will be below the horizon at that time. But people in the West, like in California, will be able to see it. It should brighten by several magnitudes when the smash occurs. Here in Virginia, we will have a skywatch on Sunday evening, and then there will be a live coverage of the smash in the Science Museum about 2 in the morning. It should brighten from a faint object in a moderately large telescope to a object bright enough to be seen without a telescope. If you are on the West Coast, definitely look for this comet and watch it brighten before your eyes.
2005/06/28
So now we are getting revenge against the comets. NASA decided that it would go to the comet and crash into it first. The comet is Comet Tempel 1, a moderately faint periodic comet. The NASA probe will release a projectile that will crash into the comet, causing a big crater there, and throwing all sorts of comet stuff into space, where the rest of the probe can relay information of it back to Earth. By that method, we may find out what is in the comet and how it got there.
Will we see it in our skies? We certainly will. But not here on the East Coast, as the comet will be below the horizon at that time. But people in the West, like in California, will be able to see it. It should brighten by several magnitudes when the smash occurs. Here in Virginia, we will have a skywatch on Sunday evening, and then there will be a live coverage of the smash in the Science Museum about 2 in the morning. It should brighten from a faint object in a moderately large telescope to a object bright enough to be seen without a telescope. If you are on the West Coast, definitely look for this comet and watch it brighten before your eyes.
2005/06/28
Big Red Moon and Other Planets
Tonight I saw the Summer Solstice Full Moon. This full moon is the lowest moon there can possibly be in the sky. This is because the full moon is opposite the sun, and the sun is at the summer solstice for the Northern hemisphere, so the moon is at the winter solstice. It must be a really bright sight in places like Sydney and Buenos Aires, really high in the sky and big and bright. I saw it tonight as a huge red disk, enlarged by its nearness to the horizon and the Moon Illusion. The red disk reminds me of the words from the Double song "Rangoon Moon", "so low and so red". I thought of calling it a McMoon (see below for why).
The previous day I got a good look at it with my 12x60 binoculars. It is really something to watch this moon, and note where the volcanic plains and cratered regions are, and that some titanic events had to have happened to our companion world billions of years ago, such as the one that produced Copernicus crater. It is just barely clearing the trees at my house, and so I have to binoculate it when it is in a hole or clearing in the trees.
Last Friday was one of the better Skywatches I have attended at the Science Museum of Virginia. About 10 astronomers with telescopes, including Gary Cowardin's Telescope Cinema featuring The Moon, came out to show the stars to about 50 people. The hour was late - it did not really get dark until about 9:30 pm. However, we saw all of the planets in the solar system, including Earth (below us), except the outer ones and except Mars, and in addition the Sun and Moon.
The highlight for me was seeing Mercury and showing Mercury to the public in my 8-inch Celestron. It was rather orangish yellow because of its low altitude, and it showed red and green sides due probably to chromatic aberration. It was probably a full disk, and no detail was visible, but the public was still interested in it anyway. After a while Mercury became weak as it hovered only 2 degrees above McDonald's - McMercury. I then switched to Venus after finding Saturn still in the trees. It was much brighter- easily visible, but again it did not show much in the telescope. as its phase was gibbous or full. Eventually Venus faded over McDonalds, and so I left McVenus and went to Jupiter, which showed three large satellites on one side and one on the other. I also showed the Moon and tried to get M4, but I could not distinguish it from the Moon-Richmond Axis of Light Pollution. I then went back to Saturn; it was dull red and the seeing was terrible, but it still showed the rings and wowed the public. Eventually McSaturn faded also. Since I had a meeting the next morning, I packed up my McCelestron at 10:30 pm and went home, but it was a good night with mostly clear skies and ideal temperatures.
2005/6/21
The previous day I got a good look at it with my 12x60 binoculars. It is really something to watch this moon, and note where the volcanic plains and cratered regions are, and that some titanic events had to have happened to our companion world billions of years ago, such as the one that produced Copernicus crater. It is just barely clearing the trees at my house, and so I have to binoculate it when it is in a hole or clearing in the trees.
Last Friday was one of the better Skywatches I have attended at the Science Museum of Virginia. About 10 astronomers with telescopes, including Gary Cowardin's Telescope Cinema featuring The Moon, came out to show the stars to about 50 people. The hour was late - it did not really get dark until about 9:30 pm. However, we saw all of the planets in the solar system, including Earth (below us), except the outer ones and except Mars, and in addition the Sun and Moon.
The highlight for me was seeing Mercury and showing Mercury to the public in my 8-inch Celestron. It was rather orangish yellow because of its low altitude, and it showed red and green sides due probably to chromatic aberration. It was probably a full disk, and no detail was visible, but the public was still interested in it anyway. After a while Mercury became weak as it hovered only 2 degrees above McDonald's - McMercury. I then switched to Venus after finding Saturn still in the trees. It was much brighter- easily visible, but again it did not show much in the telescope. as its phase was gibbous or full. Eventually Venus faded over McDonalds, and so I left McVenus and went to Jupiter, which showed three large satellites on one side and one on the other. I also showed the Moon and tried to get M4, but I could not distinguish it from the Moon-Richmond Axis of Light Pollution. I then went back to Saturn; it was dull red and the seeing was terrible, but it still showed the rings and wowed the public. Eventually McSaturn faded also. Since I had a meeting the next morning, I packed up my McCelestron at 10:30 pm and went home, but it was a good night with mostly clear skies and ideal temperatures.
2005/6/21
High School Students for Dark Skies
This is my latest blog, one for astronomy, which is one of my interests, and nature and environmental subjects as well, including nature hikes and birding.
Yesterday was a good day at the Richmond Astronomical Society. We saw the President of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Mr. Lockman, give a speech on radio telescopes at Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia.
The highlight of the meeting was hearing Mary Kathryne Dickinson, a high school student, make a presentationon her project to measure light pollution in the Richmond, Virginia area. The project has some interesting features, such as a formula to measure sky brightness, some graphs, and a map of the United States and Canada showing where the light-polluted areas are. This talk reminds me of another one given by a high school student in 2003, by Jennifer Barlow, on her effort to get Americans to turn off their lights for two hours.
One of these two women is studying the problem of light pollution, and the other is trying to do something about it. Combined together, sure something will be done about our vanishing skies. But we all need to help; it is not going to go away on the efforts of two high school girls alone.
2005/06/14
Yesterday was a good day at the Richmond Astronomical Society. We saw the President of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Mr. Lockman, give a speech on radio telescopes at Greenbank Observatory in West Virginia.
The highlight of the meeting was hearing Mary Kathryne Dickinson, a high school student, make a presentationon her project to measure light pollution in the Richmond, Virginia area. The project has some interesting features, such as a formula to measure sky brightness, some graphs, and a map of the United States and Canada showing where the light-polluted areas are. This talk reminds me of another one given by a high school student in 2003, by Jennifer Barlow, on her effort to get Americans to turn off their lights for two hours.
One of these two women is studying the problem of light pollution, and the other is trying to do something about it. Combined together, sure something will be done about our vanishing skies. But we all need to help; it is not going to go away on the efforts of two high school girls alone.
2005/06/14
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