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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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To: Doctor Stochastic; All
Thank's for forcing me to look it up. Bode's law
21 posted on 08/23/2005 5:34:54 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

Planet or not planet? I think the category "planet," like Bode's Law, is good as far as it goes, and has gone as far as it's going to go. Like Bode's Law, it's neat, but reality is messy, and sooner or later we discover that.
So, let's not call anything-else-we-find-past-Pluto a planet.
(Unless of course it's big, has moons, and a tidy orbit on the same plane as everybody else.)
I say if it causes silly arguments, it's NOT a planet.


22 posted on 08/23/2005 5:40:26 PM PDT by Graymatter
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To: neverdem

2005FY9 is Easter Bunny? I thought that was 2004JFnK.


23 posted on 08/23/2005 5:43:02 PM PDT by Graymatter
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To: neverdem

Drop it, Dr. Brown- we've already got too many planets.


24 posted on 08/23/2005 5:53:40 PM PDT by fat city ("The nation that controls magnetism controls the world.")
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To: neverdem
The failure of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to see infrared light indicated a diameter of less than 2000 miles. But the telescope was mistakenly pointed in the wrong direction.

If the telescope was pointed in the wrong direction, the lack of infrared light would not be an indication of anything.

25 posted on 08/23/2005 6:06:33 PM PDT by Logophile
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To: Izzy Dunne

Mercury should be a moon of Venus. Once this is done the plan will be complete to perfection as intended.


26 posted on 08/23/2005 6:22:36 PM PDT by RightWhale (Withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open the Land Office)
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To: Prime Choice

Pluto was obviously placed there to occupy our limited intellects so we won't have leisure time to seriously challenge the greater perfection.


27 posted on 08/23/2005 6:25:24 PM PDT by RightWhale (Withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open the Land Office)
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To: RightWhale
Mercury should be a moon of Venus. Once this is done the plan will be complete to perfection as intended.

Uhhhh, OK.
The fact that Mercury does NOT revolve around Venus is immaterial?
I would think one of the first requirements of a planet's moon is that it revolve around the parent planet.

Just whose "plan" are you referring to, anyway?

28 posted on 08/23/2005 6:27:07 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: Izzy Dunne

Either that, or the principle of Dadaism should be brought out of the attic, dusted off, and launched into the universe at large.


29 posted on 08/23/2005 6:35:40 PM PDT by RightWhale (Withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open the Land Office)
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To: RightWhale
Pluto was obviously placed there to occupy our limited intellects

That would be redundant. The female bosom accomplished that goal.

Heck, if 1/10th of 1% of the attention given to women's breasts were given to the space program, we'd have had hot dog stands on Mars 20 years ago.

30 posted on 08/23/2005 6:48:38 PM PDT by Prime Choice (E=mc^3. Don't drink and derive.)
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To: Prime Choice

That's true. I would bet the reason we are concerned at all with outer space is what Veblen said about the leisure class.


31 posted on 08/23/2005 6:51:10 PM PDT by RightWhale (Withdraw from the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty and open the Land Office)
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To: neverdem

"This Is Your Brain on Chocolate"

Yummy.

I'll post it as a separate thread, if you don't mind. I love chocolate threads. :)


32 posted on 08/23/2005 7:45:03 PM PDT by FairOpinion
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To: HP8753
It is nice to see that what the engineers and astrophysicists built and launched back in the 1970's are still proving that science can do something right.

On a different topic I remember my father who was in the business back then referred to the plans for the space shuttle as the *flying brick*. He already had told me in the mid 70's that the shuttle would have major problems with the thermal tiles so it does not surprise me that Columbia went down. Unfortunately people had to die for the vanity of others.
33 posted on 08/23/2005 7:52:08 PM PDT by No2much3 (I did not ask for this user name, but I will keep it !)
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To: Prime Choice
Heck, if 1/10th of 1% of the attention given to women's breasts were given to the space program, we'd have had hot dog stands on Mars 20 years ago.

Exactly. The solution, therefore, is to maidenform the surface of Mars. The rest will simply fall into place from there.
34 posted on 08/23/2005 9:37:15 PM PDT by Antoninus (Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, Hosanna in excelsis!)
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To: TitansAFC
"I would change the solar system models at this point. Especially with Xena...."


35 posted on 08/23/2005 9:46:12 PM PDT by Bratch
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To: neverdem

This is just more men of science speculating about the sky with their ungodly viewing tubes. More than 9 planets? Total speculation. I remember real science with steam and pistons. Not this modern fantasy romance with the sky.


36 posted on 08/23/2005 9:59:48 PM PDT by bobdsmith
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To: RightWhale; Izzy Dunne
"Mercury should be a moon of Venus."

I have no plans to place Mercury in orbit around Venus. Any Terraforming plans for either will have to deal with their current orbits.

37 posted on 08/23/2005 10:59:16 PM PDT by NicknamedBob (I am impervious to insult, being extraordinarily dense, rather like Superman.)
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To: Paleo Conservative

Wow! How cool is THAT? I get a whole planet!

Now the trick is getting there.


38 posted on 08/24/2005 6:38:02 AM PDT by Xenalyte (Lord, I apologize . . . and be with the starving pygmies in New Guinea amen.)
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· X-Planets ping list · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark ·

39 posted on 10/20/2006 11:46:31 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (Dhimmicrati delenda est! https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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