In the entry before this one, I talked about the two newly-discovered objects out past Pluto. When I heard that one of them was at 18th magnitude, I wondered if it could be detected with a telescope my group has set up (by my group, I mean the education and public group of which I am a member).

18th magnitude is pretty faint, about 1/60000th as bright as the faintest star you can see with your unaided eye. But we have a decent setup, so I went for it last night with a co-worker, Logan. Today, I took the images, cleaned them up a bit (just a bit; I didn’t want to spend more time making them pretty– I just wanted to see if we could see the object!) and added them all together. Here is the result.

2003 EL61 is arrowed (click on the image for a bigger version). At least, I think that’s it. I have an image of that region taken many years ago, and the bright stars in Logan’s and my image are there, all except for that one. So I suspect that’s it. We can’t be sure until we get more images and see if that object moves. Unfortunately, our images from last night weren’t all that hot; the guiding on the ’scope was off. We’ll try again tonight. If it comes out better I’ll post the images.

A funny note: I had an interview on Coast to Coast AM about this object and UB313, the other giant iceball. These observations were being made while I was on the radio! GORT, our telescope, is remotely controlled. So Logan and I were connected to the telescope control computer (Logan at his house, me at mine) while he controlled the ’scope, and I was IMing him with comments. What an odd way to do science!

ALERT! I will be on Coast to Coast AM radio tonight to talk about this from 10:00 to 10:30. I also have a new webpage about it.

Note: After I posted this, another announcement came across my desk: yet another big object past Pluto, maybe bigger than the one discussed below. Designated 2033 UB 313, it may be 3000 km across, comfortably larger than Pluto’s 2300 km. Read about both here.

I had something else I was gonna post today, but then this came up.

Checking an old series of images to look for dim, distant objects beyond Pluto, astronomer Jose-Luis Ortiz at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, Spain, found something interesting. It was slow-moving, indicating it was well beyond Pluto, but much brighter than you’d expect for something that far out. That implies (but does not prove) it might be large, even larger than Pluto.

The object was picked up again by American astronomers using the giant Keck 10-meter telescopes in Hawaii, as well as with the also-giant-but-not-quite-as-much 8-meter Gemini telescope. It’s been given the designation 2003 EL61. And the plot thickens– it appears to be the same object found by another group (the same ones who found Quaoar and Sedna, two of the largest objects orbiting the Sun beyond Pluto).

Is this an object bigger than Pluto? That depends. By measuring the orbit, astronomers are confident about its distance. If it is very reflective (think icy) then it doesn’t have to be as big to be so bright. If it’s non-reflective and dark (as many objects out there are) then it has to be a lot bigger to be as bright as it is as seen by us.

Read more about it here and here. If you are a member of Yahoo!Groups, you can also read about it on the Minor Planets Mailing List. And be prepared to see the debate on "what is a planet" heating up yet again. I might even write my own thoughts about it.

Remember the movie Forbidden Planet? (If you haven’t, shame on you! — go out and rent it). The movie was ground-breaking in many ways, one of which was the use of electronic noise instead of music in the background. It gives the movie, a strange, eerie, unearthly feel to it. It turns out, sometimes, that nature imitates art.

Our story starts in the center of the solar system, where a wind blows from the Sun. This wind is ethereal, wispy, and makes a laboratory vacuum seem like maple syrup. It’s no warm earthly breeze; it’s more of a sandstorm, comprised of billions of tons of electrons, protons, and other subatomic particles leaving the Sun every second. It’s also fleet: it screams along at a million miles an hour, flowing ever-outward into space.

… unless something is in the way. Planets, for example, are an obstacle for this wind. If a planet has a magnetic field, it can deflect the particles, bending them and guiding them down onto the planet. They hit the atmosphere and slow down, generating radio waves. These waves can be recorded, and translated into sound in much the same way radio station signals are when you listen on your car radio (remember them? Before podcasts and MP3s).

The sounds generated this way are… well, they’re weird. Creepy. They whistle, chirp, whoop, and moan. I found these sound files a few years back when I was doing some research on converting electromagnetic data like radio waves into sound. I’m telling you, they are downright alien. You’d swear nothing on Earth would make that noise… but there you are.

But now the weirdest of them all has come out. The Cassini spacecraft is orbiting Saturn, and it has a radio wave detector on it. When the solar wind particles move along Saturn’s magnetic field, they generated radio waves with wavelengths that are kilometers long. The Cassini scientists converted them into sound. Want some nightmares tonight? Play the results while you’re in bed tonight. Yikes.

Sweet dreams…

"… monsters from the id! […] The fool, the meddling idiot! As though his ape’s brain could contain the secrets of the Krell."

I’ve been accused of a lot of things since I embarked on my path of actively debunking nonsense. NASA lackey, CIA spook (yes, seriously), and so on. From religious folks I have endured other epithets, including being called "atheist" (like it’s a dirty word), anti-religious, heathen, etc.

I don’t hate creationists and intelligent design proponents, but I hate what they do. And I’ll tell you why.

They try to kill curiosity.

For me, being curious is what it is to be human. For proof, watch any toddler on a nature walk. They look at everything. Every leaf, every caterpillar, every worm, every pebble… they are all a source of endless fascination. Watch their face when they find something new. Naked delight is the most beautiful thing you can see on anyone;s face, but on a small child it’s sacred.

An when they learn to talk– or more specifically, when they learn to ask questions– the delight is multiplied. My own Wee Astronomer asked thousands of questions about all aspects of life, and we have been happy to indulge her in this. She loves life, nature, and the planet she lives on. And she has a nearly insatiable curiosity about them that makes my heart sing.

But creationism wants to crush this in her. They may claim that the heavens declare God’s work, but in the end it all boils down to the single phrase "God did it". There is no real explanation to it; in fact, to stress this point, if you get too curious or want to question God, they say "God works in mysterious ways", which is their way of saying shut up and accept it.

That is pure poison to me. There is no quest there, no curiosity, no solving one mystery to find six more underneath it. This is inhuman. It is a shutting off of the brain, of the most fundamental aspect of what makes us who we are.

In the early part of the 20th century, there was much debate about life on Mars, and whether some intelligence was responsible for so many features thought to be seen there. The Swedish chemist and Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius said this about the debate in 1918:

The theory that intelligent men exist on Mars is very popular. With its help everything can be explained, particularly if we attribute an intelligence vastly superior to our own to these beings, so that we are not always able to fathom the wisdom with which [they do things]… The trouble with these “explanations” is that they explain everything, and therefore in fact nothing.

Those exemplify science. I bet the majority of scientists who do crossword puzzles take all of five seconds to exult when they solve one. Then they start looking forward to the next. There are always more mysteries, more puzzles to unravel.

Note:An interview I did with Paul Harris on KMOX radio about the Shuttle is available online.

Note (July 26, 2005 at 13:37 Pacific time): A lot of the major media are reporting that a piece of foam came off the external tank shortly after the solid rocket booster separation (video from MSNBC). A piece of something clearly does come off, and it clearly misses the orbiter. I’m sure other pieces came off as well; it’s inevitable. NASA is investigating the many, many cameras they used to observe the launch, and I’ll report here when more is found. Remember too, they have a system to inspect tiles now using what is essentially a camera on the end of long boom, and they’ll be taking shots during an EVA (space walk) as well. Also, check out this way cool flash gizmo on MSNBC to see what upgrades have been done to the Shuttle.

Note (July 26, 2005): SUCCESS! The Space Shuttle Discovery is now on orbit after an apparently flawless launch. For more information, try spaceref.com, space.com, and of course NASA.

Two quick notes today:

1) NASA will try to launch the Shuttle once again on Tuesday, July 26, at 10:39 a.m. Eastern US time. The problem with the sensor in the fuel tank was traced to an intermittent shorting of the line. This is true: that was the first thing I thought of when I heard the problem was coming and going. I had the same problem with a poorly insulated distributor line in my old Datsun. NASA needs to hire me as a consultant. Anyway, read more at spaceref.com.

2) Some Hubble news… you probably know that there are all sorts of talks going on about whether to save Hubble Space Telescope (HST) or not. It’s expensive, but it’s a great observatory; it’ll take a Shuttle flight, but that may not be safe; they can just strap on a de-orbiting rocket and ditch it in the Pacific, but astronomers will storm NASA HQ with pitchforks and torches.

A major problem is time. HST is not in deep space, it’s orbiting the Earth only couple of hundred miles up. There is air there… thin, but there. That slowly degrades HST’s orbit, bringing it closer to Earth, where the air is thicker, slowing it more, dropping it farther. You see the problem. So they need to either de-orbit it or boost it to a higher orbit as soon as possible. However, a new model of how the Sun is supposed to behave has dealt NASA a slight reprieve. When the Sun throws a temper tantrum, blasting out solar flares and such, those hit the Earth’s atmosphere, which responds by puffing up. That means satellites (like HST) can get their orbit decaying faster than usual.

Well, things may be looking somewhat brighter now. A new solar model just came out that says the Sun is expected to calm down for a while. If true, there’s not as a big a hurry to take care of HST. That’s good news, because any mission to do anything with Hubble involves the Shuttle, and it would be nice to see a couple of successful missions under NASA’s belt before they make up their minds about the ’scope.

Read more about it here. I have lots of stuff I’ve written about Hubble too, on my Bitesize Astronomy pages.

Pareidolia never sleeps.

That’s the psych term for seeing patterns (usually faces) in random patterns. Like, say, the “face” on Mars, or Lenin in a shower curtain, or, of course, the mother of all faces: the Virgin Mary in a stain on an underpass.

People tend to see what they wish to see, so of course any vaguely longish oval with a smear around it looks like Jesus. Scale is not important; you can see Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich, or in a bank window (scroll down that page to see it).

Some people see Jesus in the Eagle Nebula, which is hard to beat for scale. Still for terrestrial terms, this new one ain’t so bad.

It’s brought to you courtesy of Google maps, it’s two miles wide and four long, and it’s in Peru. I’ll admit, it does look like a face, but unless Jesus bears an uncanny resemblance to Gandalf (or perhaps Confucius), I’m guessing that some people are seeing a wee bit too much into this. Of course, when you see something like this:

… maybe Gandalf isn’t such a bad guy to have around.

BREAKING NEWS (July 20, 2005): NASA will try to launch the Shuttle again on Tuesday, July 26. I’ll have more news as it comes in.

36 years ago today, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on another world.

I was too young to remember it clearly (I remember the launch of Apollo 15 much better; my family went to Florida to see it). I only vaguely remember the other landings, too.

Somehow, that seems wrong. Anniversaries are supposed to be at least a little nostalgic, I guess, but still. There’s way too much nostalgia in this one. It’s just been way too long since we’ve gone back.

And this time there are better reasons. Well, the cold war was actually a pretty good reason. And there were other reasons too– the lessons learned, the technology pushed, the inspiration it gave to a generation of people (me included). But in the 1960s and 1970s, the attainment of the Apollo landings didn’t come with a warranty. There was no long-term commitment.

This time may be different. In 2008, NASA will launch the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will map out the surface of the Moon at higher resolution than any spacecraft since the Apollo missions. It’s a prelude for colonization, and I think that’s a pretty good idea. As Robert Heinlein said, the Earth is too fragile a basket to put all our eggs in.

After that will be more probes, and by 2015 or so we’ll have spaceships which can carry people back to the Moon… this time, I hope, to stay.

Anniversaries, I guess, are for being nostalgic, but it’s important to leverage that nostalgia for the future. When I look at the Moon, I don’t want to think “Ah, what could have been” anymore. I want to think “Let’s take that next small step.”