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10 Planets? Why Not 11?
NY Times ^ | August 23, 2005 | KENNETH CHANG

Posted on 08/23/2005 4:39:11 PM PDT by neverdem

PASADENA, Calif. - Between feedings and diaper changes of his newborn daughter, Michael E. Brown may yet find an 11th planet.

Once conducted almost exclusively on cold, lonely nights, observational astronomy these days is often done under bright California sunshine.

When he has a few spare minutes, Dr. Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, downloads images taken during a previous night by a robotically driven telescope at Palomar Observatory 100 miles away. Each night, the telescope scans a different swath of sky, photographing each patch three times, spaced an hour and a half apart.

In any one of the photographs, a planet or some other icy body at the edge of the solar system looks just like a star. Unlike a star it moves between the exposures.

Dr. Brown's computer programs flag potential discovery candidates for him to inspect. He quickly dismisses almost all of them - double images caused by a bumping of the telescope, blurriness from whirls in the atmosphere or random noise.

Sometimes, like last Jan. 5, he spots a moving dot.

Dr. Brown had rewritten his software to look for slower-moving and more distant objects.

On that morning, he was sitting in his Caltech office - unremarkable university turf sparsely decorated with a not-full bottle of Jack Daniel's, a dragon mobile, a dinosaur toothbrush, a Mr. Potato Head and other toys and knickknacks that long predated parenthood - and re-examining images from nearly a year and a half earlier, Oct. 21, 2003.

The first several candidates offered by the computer were the usual garbled images.

Then he saw it: a bright, unmistakably round dot moving across the star field.

He did a quick calculation. Even if this new object reflected 100 percent of the sunlight that hit it - and...

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events; US: California
KEYWORDS: astronomy; brown; kbo; kuiperbelt; michaelebrown; planets; planetx; pluto; science; space; xplanets
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1 posted on 08/23/2005 4:39:11 PM PDT by neverdem
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To: neverdem

Interesting the sizes of those bodies are nearly the same.


2 posted on 08/23/2005 4:41:40 PM PDT by RightWhale (Withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open the Land Office)
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To: Xenalyte

Ping!


3 posted on 08/23/2005 4:43:36 PM PDT by Paleo Conservative (France is an example of retrograde chordate evolution.)
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To: RightWhale

Should bigger then Pluto be the standard for Planetary status?


4 posted on 08/23/2005 4:44:11 PM PDT by Names Ash Housewares
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To: Names Ash Housewares

Planets should have moons. Either that or planets should appear on astrological charts. Something arbitrary we can argue over forever.


5 posted on 08/23/2005 4:46:56 PM PDT by RightWhale (Withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open the Land Office)
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To: Names Ash Housewares
"Should bigger then Pluto be the standard for Planetary status? "


6 posted on 08/23/2005 4:48:00 PM PDT by billorites (freepo ergo sum)
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To: billorites

Or bigger then Goofy?


7 posted on 08/23/2005 4:50:46 PM PDT by Names Ash Housewares
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To: Names Ash Housewares
I would change the solar system models at this point. Especially with Xena and Sedna, it looks like it's time to update the Almanacs.

Odd question to other Space Buffs:
What is the current location of Voyager 1 (the one which left the Solar System), and is it possible for it to get photos/info on the proposed planetary bodies mentioned in the article.

Unlikely, I'd bet. But on the off chance it's close enough for a photo....
8 posted on 08/23/2005 4:51:50 PM PDT by TitansAFC ("It would be a hard government that should tax its people 1/10th part of their income."-Ben Franklin)
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To: TitansAFC

A map could probably be made showing the deep space probes and the new planetlike bodies. Probably in most cases we are just as close from here on earth as any of them are.


9 posted on 08/23/2005 4:54:09 PM PDT by RightWhale (Withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open the Land Office)
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To: Names Ash Housewares

No one's bigger than Goofy...
unless they stuff.


10 posted on 08/23/2005 4:54:42 PM PDT by billorites (freepo ergo sum)
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To: neverdem
Am I wrong, or haven't we "discovered" a 10th plan every other year for the past 20 years?

It just seems like I remember the odd story popping up every so often about the discovery of a 10th planet.

11 posted on 08/23/2005 4:56:48 PM PDT by cincinnati65 (Just up the road a piece.......)
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To: El Gato; JudyB1938; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Robert A. Cook, PE; lepton; LadyDoc; jb6; tiamat; PGalt; ..
This Is Your Brain on Chocolate

Unproved Lyme Disease Tests Prompt Warnings

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list. Anyone can post these unrelated links as they see fit.

12 posted on 08/23/2005 5:07:18 PM PDT by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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To: neverdem

Another catastrophic failure of Bode's Laws. (Gets demoted to theory?)


13 posted on 08/23/2005 5:13:36 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Names Ash Housewares; TitansAFC; RightWhale

Planets should be in orbits with low eccentricity near the ecliptic plane or be Pluto. Pluto fails the test, but will be retained for reasons of tradition. Pluto will be the only planet which is also (read: realy just) a Kuiper belt object.


14 posted on 08/23/2005 5:14:30 PM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (Lonesome's First Law: Whenever anyone says it's not about the money, it's about the money.)
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To: TitansAFC
Position of spacecraft escaping Solar System"
15 posted on 08/23/2005 5:16:41 PM PDT by HP8753 (My cat is an NTSB Standard,The Naval Observatory calls me for time corrections.)
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To: RightWhale
Planets should have moons.

What of Venus and Mercury, then? Are you arguing they should not be planets?

16 posted on 08/23/2005 5:18:13 PM PDT by Izzy Dunne (Hello, I'm a TAGLINE virus. Please help me spread by copying me into YOUR tag line.)
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To: cincinnati65

Your right. I was thinking the same thing. What happened to all the other 10th and 11th planets?


17 posted on 08/23/2005 5:19:47 PM PDT by gnarledmaw (I traded freedom for security and all I got were these damned shackles.)
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To: neverdem
Between feedings and diaper changes of his newborn daughter, Michael E. Brown may yet find an 11th planet.

I understand that Uranus was found while changing a diaper...

18 posted on 08/23/2005 5:20:38 PM PDT by Luddite Patent Counsel (Theyre digging through all of your files, stealing back your best ideas.)
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To: RightWhale
Interesting the sizes of those bodies are nearly the same.

Some folks question that they are actually planets; that they are more likely to be large, comet-like Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). That's part of the reason why a lot of people wanted to reclassify Pluton/Charon as a KBO.

I don't discount Dr. Brown's very thorough work. It's just going to take a bit more to sell me (and a lot of others).

19 posted on 08/23/2005 5:21:06 PM PDT by Prime Choice (E=mc^3. Don't drink and derive.)
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To: Luddite Patent Counsel
I understand that Uranus was found while changing a diaper...

Watch out for the Klingons there.

20 posted on 08/23/2005 5:21:33 PM PDT by Prime Choice (E=mc^3. Don't drink and derive.)
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