Requiem for Relativity

Now, I have more reason to think the Bradford Observatory might be big enough to do the job: Steve Riley read my last major post and emailed me that he's not using a 16", he's using an 11"! This is with maximum personal care and attention, though.

correction 6/24/08: 8", not 11"

On the Sedna problem. The only thing I can think of at the moment, is the idea that masses clump much much earlier than we thought. A gas cloud that splits into two unequal portions. One becomes our sun, the other a brown dwarf. This thing is about a light year across and there are other clouds in the cosmic nursery which are quite close. If matter starts to clump at this very early stage, it might explain why Sedna and co have such large eccentricities. They could be nearly as old as the cosmic cloud from which they are born. In a sense they get left behind when the planets move closer into the parent sun. They are left in these daft orbits as the cosmic nursery breaks up. The problem would then be to explain how an event such as a nova, can cause particles int eh cloud to collapse into fairly large masses so quickly.

"Dot update"

One of my five additional nearby starlike disappearing Sky Survey dots, is

"C11" (Jan 31 1987, SERC Red) Strasbourg "Aladin" RA 11 18 00.41 Decl -8 01 57.7

Assuming this is Frey and that my previous post is valid, I find with my IBM 486 "BASIC" program above, that Barbarossa should be on this 1987 plate at

11 18 03.006 -7 56 29.4.

There is a magnitude +19 star at

11 18 02.80 -7 56 21.8.

This star seems brighter relative to its neighbors, on this 1987 La Silla sky survey vs. the 1986 "UK Red" sky survey. Its R1 & R2 USNO-B catalog magnitudes are nearly equal, but the documentation doesn't reveal the relative influence of the two or three plates used to compute each magnitude. So, it might be a nonresolved conjunction, or (less likely) occultation.

My computerized Earth parallax correction uses the sun's apparent position. Barbarossa orbits the center of gravity of the solar system: including Jupiter & Saturn. Saturn was near quadrature with Barbarossa then, so its influence changed little between 1986 & 1987. On the other hand, Jupiter was nearly opposite Barbarossa. Jupiter's 30 degree motion in one year would subtract about 0.15s RA from Barbarossa's predicted apparent position in 1987, vs. 1986. So, only the predicted and observed Declinations of the star are significantly discrepant.

My very first discovered sky survey "Barbarossa" object, "C", lies 145" exactly S of the predicted position of Barbarossa. My pixel analysis of this object indicated that it is at least two different unresolved objects (the center of luminosity doesn't lie in the brightest pixel). Object C might be an unresolved conjunction of two of Barbarossa's inner planets. (Such "inner planets" appear on the A and B plates.) If so, then these planet(s) would need 6% the mass of Barbarossa, to move the center of gravity of the non-Frey, inner, portion of Barbarossa's system, 145*0.06/1.06 = 8" S. This would place the predicted Barbarossa at the coordinates of the observed star.

Talking to Bill via e mail about brown dwarfs, he mentioned that he thought that Barbarossa was already taken. i did a check on the JPL Horizons site and it has indeed been taken by an asteroid.

Sooo, I think it should be called the planet "Billgates." Billgates was a Greek mythological god, the god of dodgy operating systems [8D][] That should be worth a few backhanders from a man who shall remain nameless [8D]

Hi Joe,

I should point out that there are no disappearing/moving objects on Bobs NEM10 and 12 images. The disappearing dots are artifacts. The Minimum FWHM of every stellar object in the images was 5.1" indicating poor seeing and/or poor focus and the targets you identified had a FWHM of 1.3". Given the image resolution was 1.48"/pixel this indicates hot pixels.

Cheers

Bill

Let Bill Gates know you want to name such a potentially important object after him and he may fund all your search efforts. I think he's got a few dollars to spare.