Requiem for Relativity

I've emailed Joan Genebriera's photo of Barbarossa, to "Stoat", but I'm unable to cut & paste it into this window. If you would like to have the photo, please email me or Stoat. He's been successful posting astronomical photos here; he might be able to post this photo of Barbarossa.

In the 0.7" resolution photo by Joan Genebriera (electronic, not a scan of film) Barbarossa is north of the date "25" printed in the lower right corner. Barbarossa & its apparent moon are nearer the edge than the bottom. Together with the moon, and three stars to the NW, they make a line of five points of light.

Here's that image, I reduced its size, so that it wouldn't create problems with the text window. Has Joan put up the fits file on the web?

Stoat, in the blowup I assume Barbarossa and its moon are directly over the "25" about 1/3 of the way from top to bottom?

Letter re: identification, of Barbarossa candidate, as asteroid

Dear Ms. Genebriera & Mr. Riley [Steve Riley, amateur astronomer, USA],

I compared all of Mr. Riley's photo to its counterpart, Ms. Genebriera's photo "Barbarossa_3" (i.e., the photo with the more northerly coordinates, on which I saw the candidate object). Also I compared them to the SERC DSS2 (Red filter) image in the Aladin archive. Both photos showed excellent correspondence to the archive image.

Other than the candidate object on Ms. Genebriera's photo, I saw nothing on either photo that did not match the DSS2 image (except for obvious very slight defects). In particular, I saw nothing retrograde thereof on Mr. Riley's photo.

I spoke lengthily yesterday with *********, to whom I had emailed Ms. Genebriera's photo. His opinion was that the candidate object was *not* a cosmic ray artifact.

So, it might have been an asteroid on Ms. Genebriera's photo. An asteroid would be out of the field of view of Mr. Riley's photo. A trans-Neptunian object, even as close as 30 AU from the sun (which would give 5 arcminutes motion in 3.2 days now, near opposition) would have been inside the field of view (centered on the candidate object).

Thank you both for your assistance. This initial negative result neither proves nor disproves the existence of a distant planet shepherding a point of the 5:2 Jupiter:Saturn resonance. The 1987 SERC image I discovered, is consistent with such a planet.

I'll forward to both of you, any important information I acquire in the future about this. Meanwhile, if either of you take more photos along the ecliptic in this area, I will give my full attention to their analysis.

Sincerely,

Joseph C. Keller, M. D.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by nemesis</i>
<br />Stoat, in the blowup I assume Barbarossa and its moon are directly over the "25" about 1/3 of the way from top to bottom?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

[I'll answer since I'm online. - JK] Nemesis, you're correct. Also, in the top picture, it's 1/4 of the way up from the bottom.

It didn't show up in Steve Riley's verification photo. Almost all the stars, even much dimmer ones, did, so now I think it's an asteroid, maybe one with irregular shape or albedo, hence the double appearance.

- Joe Keller