Requiem for Relativity

I went looking for any other robotic telescopes, due to the Bradford's web site being down at the moment. There's a small one from the Univ of Iowa, there's a 2 metre reflector from the Univ of Liverpool, and there's two 2 metre ones from the Faulkes foundation. One in Australia and one in Hawaii.

Interesting that, I once suggested that if aliens have arrived here, they'd set up Google as a study aid [8D][] This guy Faulkes is an amateur astronomer, who just buys 2 metre telescopes out of his pocket money, he's one of the founders of Google, so he must have a shilling or two to rub together.

It might be an idea to set up something here at meta research, to use the Faulkes telescopes. The guy wants to build a network of them for schools' use.

Nem 8 is now up as a finished job at the Bradford. With a bit of luck the next one nem9, will be up shortly as well. Do you think I should go for a full 3 minutes exposure?

Here's the image of nem8. I've rotated this one 180 degrees. I've just disdovered that one can't download the jobs as fits files, unless they are ones own jobs. So Joe, do you want me to e mail them to you? Next ones I think I'll drop the neutral density filters.

Here's an address for Dill Faulkes. it might be worth contacting him through this site. I think he would see the pr benefits of finding a solar systtem brown dwarf, to his robotic telescope project, www.faulkes.com/

I continue to work on arranging the "disappearing dots" into a model of Barbarossa's system. Herein I present my latest, most accurate (correcting my transcription error in the coordinates of one object, and increasing the accuracy of my adjustments for Earth parallax), most plausible and most conservative model to date.

Three dots are plausibly Barbarossa. These are (using the names of convenience I've assigned them as I've worked):

A2. POSS-I (Red) plate date 1954.154, geocentric position RA 11 02 25.16 Decl -5 56 11.3

C. SERC (Red) plate 1987.08215, RA 11 18 03.18 Decl -7 58 46.1

D. SERC-I (Optical Infrared) plate 1997.16711, RA 11 22 16.77 Decl -8 29 30.9.

The position of C differs 115 arcsec from its expected, parallax-corrected, great-circle interpolated position between A2 & D. Though this deviation is, I think, about 10x bigger than the errors inherent in my model or in my calculations, the only component of the deviation big enough to demand explanation, is that perpendicular to Barbarossa's path (i.e., the path from A2 to D).

Two more dots are consistent with the moon Frey in a near-circular approx. 1.4 AU, 22-yr orbit inclined only a few degrees to Barbarossa's orbital plane:

A. POSS-I (Red) plate date 1954.154, geocentric position RA 11 03 12.4 Decl -5 58 09

D2. SERC-I (Optical Infrared) plate 1997.16711, RA 11 22 32.9 Decl -8 26 56.

I've found yet three more dots, two of which could be consistent with the moon Freya in a near-circular 2 AU orbit moderately inclined to Frey's:

B8. UK-Red plate approx. date 1986.199, geocentric position RA 11 14 58 Decl -7 42 20

or

C5. SERC (Red) plate 1987.08215, RA 11 16 04.4 Decl -7 47 51 ;

and

E2. SERC-I (Optical Infrared) plate approx. date 1995.140, approx. RA 11 19 43 Decl -8 06 50.

These orbits imply about 0.0054 solar mass for Barbarossa and much lower mass for Frey and Freya. The total system mass thus could be close to the earlier predicted 0.0068 solar mass which smoothed the net Pioneer 10/11 accelerations.

Thanks again, Stoat, for the above!

Nem 10 is done and it looks a lot better with no filters and 3 minutes exposure 03:29 on Thursday 12 April 2007 (02:29:32 UTC)

Should I send the fits to you, or should we try again with two new plates at those settings and new coordinates?

<i>Originally posted by Stoat</i>
<br />Nem 10 is done and it looks a lot better with no filters and 3 minutes exposure 03:29 on Thursday 12 April 2007 (02:29:32 UTC)

Should I send the fits to you, or should we try again with two new plates at those settings and new coordinates?


I hope you can find time, to keep taking these Bradford Tenerife pictures at likely coordinates (see below, for latest developments). This can lead to finding that "moving dot" we need.

Yes, although posting the images here is good, emailing the files to me too would be a plus. I know how to download "FITS view" freeware, so I can look at them thoroughly from my computer in the library.