Requiem for Relativity

Bradford College (remote 14", Tenerife) took a photo early this morning, a 3 minute red filter exposure "completed" 04:52:45 UTC Jan. 2, 2009. The FITS header lacks the date or time, but they included those in the email notice. So, I'm putting the date and time here for convenience.

The expected position of Frey is just off the east edge of the photo. The expected position of Barbarossa is near the center. There is a suspicious cluster of pixels at that position. There is some camera motion artifact (the instructions warn that this is likely for exposures over 2 min.). The long axis of the suspicious pixel group parallels the long axis of the short star tracks due to tracking imperfection. Stars of brightness similar to Barbarossa on the Dec. 22 U. of ******* photo usually show poorly if at all on this unstacked Bradford photo (though it was taken on a moonless night), so I hardly can expect better.

I've ordered another Bradford photo (their limit is one at a time; it's free). Slooh never did get any photos; I think my $15 subscription there is used up.

Hi Joe, if I recall, there's a post in this thread somewhere, where I said, should I use a filter? I believe it was an Australian astronomer who said don't. He did look at the fits files and he did know what he was talking about. Can you remember him? I did have his e mail address but I had a system crash and lost my adress book. I think he was called Bill.

Hi Joe, here's an image from that robotic telescope. Note that the grid lines are skewed a little. I suspect that's why they have closed it down for repairs. The grids are part of the fits file and not an error in photoshop or fv viewer.

I found a really good photoshop fits filter at spacetelescope.org Much better image. Go to the website and then to projects, it's called liberator.

Barbarossa's image is now on the U. of Iowa website, astro.physics.uiowa.edu, on the homepage. The photo is labeled "Barbarossa" with the serial number of the photo, and the date. One may click on the thumbnail for the full photo and a detailed FITS header. This isn't quite the same photo I analyzed: it's a 3 minute red filter exposure, apparently not stacked. The U. of Iowa robotic telescope's tracking failed soon after taking this photo, and it's not known when repairs will be completed.

I named it "Barbarossa", from the prolog to a political satire by an author named Fleming, made into a Hollywood movie in 1945. The magnitude is +18 to +19, compared to USNO-B catalog stars. It's a twin planet: amateur photos (Barbarossa by Joan Genebriera on Tenerife with a 16", March 2007; the main moon, Frey, by Steve Riley in California with an 8", April 2007, and later by both Genebriera, and Robert Turner) and 1986 & 1954 online sky surveys, accurately conform to a 198 AU, e<0.05 solar orbit; a 0.94 AU, e=0.24 (real) binary orbit; Barbarossa having 3.3 Jupiter masses and its main satellite Frey 0.46 Jupiter masses. Thus our solar system somewhat resembles that of Epsilon Indi.

I saw the U. of Iowa website photo, Joe. An arrow to specify Barbarossa may be helpful.