Requiem for Relativity

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Joe Keller</i>

Estimating the center of light by eye, and using the coordinates built into the file, I find Barbarossa at

11:26:33.39, -9:16:32.8
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Hi joe,
I agree that there seems to be something there. I've checked plate by plate, in all of the six good ones, and a (very faint) darkening is present in more than one of them(but not in all of them, AFAIK). This seems to be, nevertheless, at the observational limit of the telescope.

After that, I've extrapolated the position, according to your indications (0.98s W and 4.75" N per day) to look into the other stacked photos, for days 53, 55 and 56, but couldn't find a Barbarossa there. Anyways, the stacked image for day 54(Feb 23) is clearly the best one, by a good margin.

Those who want to take a look, can download the stacked images (files with an 'S' in the name) from maurol.com.ar/barbarossa (right click and "Save As", to actually download the file.)

Remember: I'm not an expert in this, at all (but learning fast).
I've used a (very nice!) GPL program called gcx, to align the frames, and stacked them using a method called 'kappa_sigma'.
Some minor tweaking of the source code was needed, to be able to download the online star catalogs from inside the program. The rest just worked nicely, out of the box.

Mauro

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Maurol</i>
<br /> ...I've extrapolated the position, according to your indications (0.98s W and 4.75" N per day) to look into the other stacked photos, for days 53, 55 and 56, but couldn't find a Barbarossa there. ... <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Nor did I find it for any of the other days. Thanks for the assistance!

- Joe Keller

Here's the photoshop liberator images of 53 and 54 layered. This is knocked down a lot to get it hosted.

Mauro has been kind enough to put those two images up on his web site. They are about two and a half meg each.

maurol.com.ar/barbarossa

Thanks for posting the images!

Blue vs. Red

A Blue sky survey plate was made an hour after the 1954 Red plate. Neither Barbarossa nor Frey appear on this Blue plate (there is some increased light at Frey's location, but this is there on some other Blue plates). If the detection limit of the 1954 Blue plate is mag 21.0 (as suggested by the USNO-B catalog and sky survey documentation) then it would seem that both Barbarossa & Frey are very red. I recently reassessed the 1954 Frey as Red mag 18.3, so B-R &gt; 2.7.

The Wickramasinghe & Hoyle B-R of 1.0 for KBOs, becomes 1.2 for the actual plate windows, and 1.5 considering the Sun's photometric color; but this redness resembles a peach more than it does an apple. According to the Handbook of Chemistry & Physics, 44th ed., red crepe paper or red enamel have blue/red reflectance ratios of about 25, not 2.5; so, B-R could be 3.5 + 0.3 = 3.8, and Frey's average Blue mag 18.7 + 3.8 = 22.5.

A Barbarossa or Frey this red, would be seen as well with Red filter as without (in daylight, the astronomical Red, Wratten 25 filter, requires 3 f stops, i.e., 8x more light). Detection would depend on aperture and time. Six or seven stacked 2 min. exposures ( = 12 or 14 min) from the U. of Iowa 15 inch telescope with clear filter, would be less likely to detect Frey, than would Genebriera's single 20 min exposure with 16 inch telescope and Red filter. The Red sky survey 45 to 75 minute exposures with 40 inch telescopes, would collect 30x as much red light as the U. of Iowa. Such advantages have been claimed for CCD cameras vs. photographic plates, but are doubtful in practice, especially if noise is greater and stacking sacrifices some information.

Also, relevant Blue plates were made on April 15, May 8 & 9, 1983 and March 5, 1984. Barbarossa's theoretical position is in the poor image area near the edge of the 1984 Blue plate, but the other Blue plates seem good, though the April 15, 1983 theoretical position also is near that plate's edge. Among these three good plates, I found only three "disappearing dots" in the relevant area. Two were far from Barbarossa's expected position. One really is found as a bright nebulosity on the 1954 plate as well.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Joe Keller</i>
<br />Thanks for posting the images!
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Hi Joe, you're welcome. I've added a README.txt file to the directory containing the images, as people seem to be confused/uninformed about them.
I was thinking: maybe you can produce tentative ephemeris data for Barbarossa, for the next days or weeks, so an informed astronomer would be able to take photos of the corresponding regions of the sky, and we can finally confirm whether this object exists, or not.

Mauro