Requiem for Relativity

I searched along the track, in the (above) Hubble archive, using their default 3' radius disks, 3' apart, but found no Hubble images. I did find images by specifying a much larger radius, but I found no coordinates on those, nor any way to zoom.

With the Bradford, just sign in and there's a "your menu " button left of screen. Click that and there is a number of buttons to submit job requests.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Stoat</i>
<br />With the Bradford, just sign in and there's a "your menu " button left of screen. Click that and there is a number of buttons to submit job requests.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

It tells me I'm not authorized to submit, that I have the wrong kind of status. [Addendum] I see that one must "verify" one's account. I'm waiting for the verification code to come: apparently this can take days. Also I notice (March 19) from searching the "jobs" list for 5400 sec jobs, that Stoat's March 15 job is still "awaiting scheduling".

"&gt; ...if you have the image as a FITS file, then I would expect it
&gt;to have the observing date in the header.
&gt;
&gt;Cheers,
&gt;
&gt; - Arnold Rots"

I asked about 20 relevant people for help getting the date of the plate. Only two tried to help. Of the two suggestions, the above was the only one that worked.

*********

Dear Dr. Rots,

Your suggestion worked. Here's how to get the date of an archive.eso plate:

1. Google "FITSview", then download the freeware of that name. It was fast & easy.

2. Open another window for archive.eso, then when you search for the image from ESO, choose the (default) FITS option.

3. Save the image FITS file to your desktop.

4. Go to the FITSview page which should be still open on your browser, click "File" then "Open". When you see the image, then click "File" then "Image info". Then you'll see the header.

Thanks again. You might want to save these instructions.

Sincerely,
Joe Keller

The date of the (DSS-2 Red) plate showing Barbarossa, is January 31, 1987: the last day of the month of Janus. If IRAS Source #1 is accepted also, this implies, for a circular orbit, a distance of roughly 135 A.U. and a prograde orbital period of 1700 yr. (Non-negligible corrections for Earth parallax occur for both the IRAS and the DSS-2 observations.)

In this scenario, Barbarossa would need a diameter of 10,000-20,000 mi. (and its moons half that)(depending on albedo) to be consistent with the +18.6 Red magnitude which both this author (by comparison with the nearby cataloged stars on the plate) and the USNO determined. The streak should be about 1" long considering the direction of Earth's orbital motion in January, vs. 3" observed.

The planet remains, of course, spherical, gravitationally bound, and unable (Poincare instability) to rotate far during the 1hr exposure. That the midpoint of the best-fitting streak does not overlie the darkest pixel, implies a moon as before, which also accounts for most of the streak length. The present position would be roughly

RA 11h 36m 00s Decl -10deg 10'

Joe, I wonder if there are any telescopes in private hands with enough power to image Barbarossa. The problem with the big observatories, including USNO, is that it's so hard to get time, even for those in the "club", so to speak.