Requiem for Relativity

I put those two positions up as jobs on the Bradford robotic telescope. I used the galaxy telescope, set to rgb colour and with an exposure of 60 000 ms. Perhaps other people could do the same search with a larger exposure.

Sorry Joe but I put my image name in as Nemesis, no way can I live with Barbarossa [] In fact I'm going to riot outside the American embassy in London. I don't think there's ever been fighting in the streets from anarchic astronomers, so it will be a first. I plan something like the Spanish Civil War, so that I can start a Carl Sagan Brigade. Then I'll rewrite "for whom the bell tolls," where the partisans will discuss love, honour and Cantor's infinite sets, as they sit in a cave cleaning their guns. I'll make a fortune [][8D][}]

The movie: Russell Crowe as Tom Van Flandern and Michael De Caprio as Larry Burford, are parachuted into the mountains to help the partisans blow up the Mount Palomar telescope. Jodie Foster as the love interest, the mission is threatened by her fancying both of our heroes. Great! it has everything []

Blow it up?

Can't we all just ... kidnap the schedueling secretary? Now don't get me wrong. I like big explosions as much as the next guy. The more the better. MPT may be old, but it can still do good science if it is just pointed in the right direction.

<i>Originally posted by Stoat</i>
<br />I put those two positions up as jobs on the Bradford robotic telescope. I used the galaxy telescope, set to rgb colour and with an exposure of 60 000 ms. Perhaps other people could do the same search with a larger exposure. ..."

Thanks for the help! According to their website, that "galaxy telescope" is the biggest that Bradford Univ. has on Tenerife, a 14" Schmidt with a 24' x 24' field. I recall that c. 1930, Tombaugh used a 13" for his photographic wide ecliptic search down to +17. Would a 60sec exposure with a 14", even with modern light-recording technology, be able to see Barbarossa, whose expected Red magnitude is +18.07? The faintest of the five Objects presumed to be Barbarossa, had Red magnitude +18.59.

Another way to confirm or refute the existence of Barbarossa, would be to look for the above five Objects. One could simply look at the epochal positions (given, inter alia, in the USNO-B catalog and in my above Feb. 21 FAX to the USNO):

Object #5. USNO-B 0830-0272239 RA 11h10m08.44s Decl -6d59'37.2"

Object #1. USNO-B 0827-0286487 RA 11h12m05.59s Decl -7d14'27.8"

Object #2. USNO-B 0824-0279170 RA 11h14m54.41s Decl -7d35'13.7"

Object #3. USNO-B 0820-0274026 RA 11h18m03.53s Decl -7d58'41.0"

Object #4. USNO-B 0813-0233607 RA 11h23m30.03s Decl -8d38'37.8"


If the Objects are stars, then the USNO-B epochs and proper motions should be fairly accurate. Here they are:

Object #5. epoch 1974.5 PM in RA -120mas/yr PM in Decl -502mas/yr

Object #1. epoch 1980.0 PM in RA 128mas/yr PM in Decl 426mas/yr

Object #2. epoch 1976.1 PM in RA 274mas/yr PM in Decl 394mas/yr

Object #3. epoch 1965.1 PM in RA 308mas/yr PM in Decl 234mas/yr

Object #4. epoch 1973.0 PM in RA 302mas/yr PM in Decl 142mas/yr

It's indicated that the USNO-B positions include a correction for these alleged proper motions.

Shouldn't Barbarossa show a large annual parallelax, much larger than it's proper motion?

My Feb. 21 FAX to the USNO mentions the crowding of the brighter Red magnitudes, for the five Objects, away from +18.99. This is yet another peculiarity which adds to the overall statistical significance of the Barbarossa observations. For my original search criteria (one Red magnitude &gt;19.50, one Red &lt;18.99, both PMs &gt;80), only 59.5% of the time (within 10 deg of the above predicted line segment), is the brighter Red &lt;18.60. This gives p = 0.5954^5 = 0.075.

For the same region and criteria, only 74.8% of the time, are both PMs &gt;120. This gives p = 0.234.