Posted on 09/06/2001 9:54:36 AM PDT by Physicist
Name that telescope and win a prize
Space Shorts: NASA solicits suggestions for SIRTF’s new title
Sept. 3 — NASA is asking Earthlings to find a friendly name for a new space-based observatory that will allow scientists to search for new planets at the farthest reaches of the universe. The observatory, due to be launched in the summer of 2002, is currently called the Space Infrared Telescope Facility, or SIRTF.
“WE ARE HOPING to tap the creativity of the public to find a name suitable for this important mission that will help enrich our knowledge of the universe,” said Doris Daou, an education and outreach spokeswoman for the mission, which is being managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Members of the public have previously dreamed up the names for the Hubble Space Telescope (named after astronomer Edwin Hubble), the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (named after astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar) and the Sojourner rover used in the Mars Pathfinder mission (named after Sojourner Truth, a black abolitionist and advocate of women’s rights).
The SIRTF will allow scientists to study objects by looking for the heat they radiate in the infrared wavelength and will search for dusty discs around other stars where planets might be forming.
The deadline for nominations is Dec. 20 and must be accompanied by a short essay explaining the reasons behind the suggested name. If the name of a person is proposed, the person must be deceased.
The grand-prize winner will be flown to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for the telescope’s launch. More details are available via the contest’s Web site.
I've already entered the contest. The name I suggested is "Shapley", after the famed astronomer Harlow Shapley. Here's the essay I submitted:
Harlow Shapley was one of the very greatest astronomers of the 20th century. He's the one who first elucidated the true extent of the Milky Way galaxy, and our sun's location within it.
Interestingly, he is well known for a blunder. He identified the "spiral nebulae" not as distant galaxies, but as galactic gas clouds that were in the process of condensing into stars. This was his position in the famous "Shapley-Curtis Debate". Curtis took the position that the Milky Way galaxy was small, and that the spiral nebulae were in fact distant--but not too distant--galaxies.
Time has proved both men right and wrong. The "nebulae" are indeed galaxies, but Harlow Shapley was right about the extent of our galaxy. Nobody realized the univere was so big.
Shapley was right to expect to find stars forming within our galaxy. He believed that the "nebulae" were protosuns and not galaxies, because he could not believe that anything could be so distant. Moreover, the "nebulae" had the shape one would expect from a condensing star.
This telescope will find the protosuns that Shapley expected to see. Since he never found them, it is fitting that his namesake should.
I apologize for its being so sketchy and incoherent, but the essays are limited to 200 words, not the 250 claimed on the website. I had to do some last-minute editing. I also wanted to mention that Shapley and Hubble were great rivals in life; it is fitting that the rivalry should continue, to the advancement of astronomy.
(When I say that they were rivals, I mean that they really couldn't abide each other. One time a paper of Shapley's was sent to Hubble for peer review. Hubble scrawled the words "Of No Consequence" on the first page and sent it back without further comment. To Shapley's horror and Hubble's delight, the words somehow made it into print, appended after Shapley's name.)
Any other good names out there? Submit them and let us all know!
Who else should we apprise of this prize?
I would call it PipeDream, because
1. It looks like someone's dream of a pipe.
2. If they think we can see planets at the
farthest reaches of the universe, as opposed
to, at best, this galaxy, then it is, indeed, a
pipe dream.
He did lots of planetary stuff.
How about "The Macroscope"?
Or its nickname, the SDPS. (Super Duper Pooper Scooper)
And we're going to keep it up until
you learn to spell Reagan. Or did
you err in meaning Donald Regan?
It's always up, hard, in the dark, turns to the left and in the sucking vacuum of space.
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