Bahia BallenaFor the folks in Ballena Isle Marina yes there is another Ballena Bay it Is just around Punta Abreojos. The Spanish words abre ojos mean open the eyes and is a reference to the nasty rocks called Roca Ballena just offshore and the dangerous shoals near this point. Again we departed Bahia Asuncion at dawn and found a perfectly flat sea and no wind at all. Motoring again
Monthly Archives: December 2009
Plan a Runescape Theme Birthday Party to earn runescape gold
Runescape in real life Well the weapons may have to be left in cyberspace but there are many great Runescape online game concepts for a cool party. For a birthday party or another event teenagers will have fun bringing Runescape to life and it will also bring you much runescape gold.Runescape is an online browserbased game played by people all over the world. The game holds the Guinness world
Boston Science Museum
Today Dean myself and my niece Ashley went to the Boston Science Museum. D and I haven't been there in years. Ashley has never been there until today that is. Anyway I asked Ashley if she wanted to go with me because they are having a Harry Potter exhibit. While Ashley and I were in the exhibit Dean waited for us in the lobby he doesn't care for Harry Potter. It took us about 40 minut
Ho Chi Mihn City
On November 3rd at 8 a.m. we made our way up the Saigon River to the one and only Ho Chi Minh City. Yep thatrsquos in Vietnam. The whole voyage and the time up until the voyage I was looking forward to Vietnam I thought it was going to be an awesome experience as I didnrsquot really know too much about the place. It wasnrsquot until we left India and began studying Vietnam that I realiz
Big Decisions
Our new room sucks with motor bikers ripping by at all hours in the night waking us up. We got moved because our old room had bugs in it. This morning when we woke up we requested a move back which will happen at 7 tonight after the bugs are cleared. Again we debated doing our advanced diving course which would certify us for night dives and down to 30m instead of 18m. After a bit of talking Jeff
October Expedition Part 1
After leaving Banam Bay for the Maskelyne Island Group we got word that the two volunteers meant to join us for our October Expedition would be delayed due to lost luggage courtesy of a wonderful airline. Delays are common for us however so it was no big deal. The goal of our October Expedition was to gather information from the Southern and Western Coasts of Malekula for the Vanuatu Ministry of
Not the kind of Spring Break we were hoping for
Day 245 Flinders Ranges to Port WakefieldOur last day in the Flinders Ranges dawned bright and beautiful but it didnrsquot dawn quietly. The kookaburrarsquos were joined in their early morning cackle fest by the four young boys in the camp next door The hoards were starting to arrive and our blissfully quiet and tranquil time here was drawing to a close. With the birds the kids and the
My blog
Allo tout le monde....
Its really the unknowing thats the worst
So while I was in Vanuatu this year there were a few major earthquakes in the area that caused enough of a ruckus to make international headlines. It wasnrsquot necessarily the earthquakes that caused the ruckus but the accompanying tsunamis that followed them. One such earthquake happened to the East of Vanuatu. It was in the Fiji Samoa and American Samoa area but respectively thatrsquos
Full House
DAY 417A day of choices today it is Susanrsquos birthday and she is heading off into Wagga to have her hair done so I can either leave at 8.00 with Susan or I can leave at 9.00 with Helen and Patsy I knew that I would not be quite ready so I left at 9.00 with Helen and Patsy. Andy is staying behind to do some chores for Helen his first job of the day is to go and feed the Chickens and the d
Freaking Out
I realized today that I am going to be boarding a plane to France in only four days and unfortunately I have yet to pack. This is going to be an issue I'm sure considering that I practically own everything that American Eagle has produced in the past four years and I'm pretty sure I am not going to be able to fit it all in two suitcases even if I use those fabulous space saving bags my mom got
PreDeparture
Hello EveryoneSo I am all set up here on my computerthe internets and ready to write to you for the next three months. I will be heading to Southeast Asia with SFU Field School to study the ethnic minoritiespoliticseverything about the area. The field school will go from Thailand to Laos to Vietnam and following I will most likely be traveling with Tyson and Linnaea and whoever else we pick
January Panama Jazz Festival
http://www.ArcoProperties.comA spicy summer in Panama has started. Sun shinning bright ready for New Year but also for the Panama Jazz Festival which will be held in Panama City and Casco Viejo from January 11th to the 16th. This year the event will be dedicated to Sonny White who was a Panamanian pianist from the 20s who played with international music stars such as Billie Holiday Willie Bryant an
Ile De Re
Boxing Day was my best day since coming to France. It had been planned that we would all go to 'Ile De Re' with the dogs for a walk on the beach.Ile De Re is an island just off the coast of La Rochelle. You drive to the coast and then go over the bridge onto the Island and its odd it's like entering a different world coz when I got on the island I felt like I was 'abroad'. Its a beautiful island
Xmas Day
Woke up early to Rob wishing me a Merry Christmas at half past the middle of the night but I had only got up for the loo so when he said 'Is it Xmas yet' I was like.......NOOOOOOOOO It's NOT Xmas yet Woke up later at a more civilised hour then left him dozing and watching episodes of 'Extras' on DVD to go and speak to my wee sister on Skype. Texted my Brother and my Mum and Dad a Happy Xmas the
Adios
I'm leaving today to start my trip to San Sebastian Spain for 4 months I can't believe that its already time for me to leave. I'm excited for the new experience and to get to travel and learn about different cultures but I am also really nervous. It was really hard to leave Brandon and my family and friends Sunday Saturday night my friends and Brandon threw me a surprise going away party and it
A ghost of Christmas past
Five years ago I was sitting at work in that quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s Day desperately looking for the 10th planet. I had made a bet five years before that that I would find a new planet by Dec 31, 2004. Time was running out. I was about to lose. I hate losing. So I was searching and researching all of the pictures of the sky I had taken over the past two years hoping that maybe somewhere in those old pictures was something that I had missed. Maybe there was still a planet to be found after all. Maybe I wasn’t going to lose my bet.
Just 3 days after Christmas I came the closest I had ever come. There was something in the old images that had been missed the first time around, and it was bright. I sent email to Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz, the two other astronomers I worked with, saying that this new object was so bright that it might well be twice the size of Pluto. Or bigger! Being right after Christmas, we of course called the object Santa.
Santa, which now goes by the official name of Haumea, we now know to be only about ½ the size of Pluto, and we call it – and Pluto – a dwarf planet rather than a planet. But back in those last days of 2004 when the discovery was first made, we had no idea where all of it was heading.
Our understanding of the Kuiper belt has changed dramatically in these past five years. The best example of this change comes, I think, from the discovery of a large Kuiper belt object that was announced just a few days ago. For me it was a particularly surprising discovery. For the first time I was not at the receiving end of a telescope making the discovery, I was at the receiving end of an email asking me about this new object called 2009 YE7.
“Never heard of it,” I thought.
But, by decoding the numbers, I could tell it was something that had just been discovered a few days before. Like anyone else, my first attempt to know more was a quick trip to Google.
Ah ha! A new large Kuiper belt object found from a telescope Chile, by David Rabinowitz! Yes, the same David Rabinowitz from the Haumea discovery. He has moved on to Chile to try to make newer discoveries from there, discoveries in parts of the sky that we didn’t look at back when we were working at Palomar Observatory outside of San Diego.
Based on preliminary information, it looked likely the 9th largest Kuiper belt object ever found. David was clearly on to something good here.
I didn’t have time to delve into any more details because all of this had occurred as I was sitting in a movie theater waiting for the start of The Princess and the Frog with Lilah. She loved the part before the movie started because she could watch the on-screen ads. I checked my email and found out that there was a large Kuiper belt object that someone else had discovered. Then the movie started. I was itching to get more information about 2009 YE7, but I allowed my mind to drift down the bayou instead.
After the movie, though, my mind set to work on the implications of this new discovery. Based on its brightness it might well be a perfect size to test one of my new theories about medium-sized Kuiper belt objects. I feel like I now understand the largest objects, and I fear that I will never understand the smallest objects, but the middle ones are within grasp, if we can just find a few more to test some pet theories about them. For 2009 YE7 to be a good candidate for my theory we need to know if it has a moon, what color it is, and what materials are on its surface. Then we’ll see. I started thinking about where 2009 YE7 is in the sky, what telescopes I could use to point at it, how to time the observations.
Even as I was thinking these thoughts, my mind was drifting back to the discovery of Haumea exactly five years earlier. Back then, on the day of the discovery, we knew absolutely nothing. I had no good ideas about what Haumea would be like; I had no theories I was testing, no hypothesis to work out, no predictions to boldly claim. We were simply in the very early stages of exploration to see what was there. The exploration was going well! Soon after the discovery of Haumea, we tripled the jackpot by first discovering Eris – the one we now know to be larger than Pluto – just two weeks later, and then Makemake – the one we now know to be just a bit smaller than Pluto – a few months later. I felt the universe was exploding with new bright Kuiper belt objects and possibilities were endless. We didn’t know anything about what these objects were, how big they were, what they were made of, or what had happened to them. In April 2005 I still believed it possible that they were all 3 larger than Pluto and that they would eventually be called the 10th, 11th, and 12th planets.
In the five years since, we’ve learned a tremendous amount. We determined their sizes and gave up on any of the things in the Kuiper belt being planets (I lost my bet, too). We found Haumea’s two moons; we found that it had a surface that looks like an almost perfect glaze of ice; we found that it was white, again like ice, we found it elongated and spinning end over end every 4 hours, and we found a cloud of other smaller objects on similar orbits. We found that Makemake is covered in thick layers of frozen methane, that Eris is bigger and heavier than Pluto, and, most importantly, that things were beginning to make sense. We had moved from exploration to explanation. Haumea’s strange properties – and that cloud of objects in similar orbits – were all a consequence of a giant impact 4 billion years ago or so. Eris and Makemake were large enough that they should have methane on them.
With our new found knowledge even things that had been discovered earlier were finally being put in context. Quaoar is a weird combination of Haumea and Makemake. Orcus is what Makemake would look like if it were just a little smaller. Varuna is, well, Varuna is still confusing.
Mostly, though, now instead of each object being an individually mystery to be solved, each new object is a piece of a puzzle where many of the pieces have already been put into place. With only a little information, we can guess where the piece likely goes.
Which brings me back to 2009 YE7. Five years ago, its discovery would have been a thorough mystery to solve. But when I first heard of it two days ago, it was, instead, potentially the exact area of the puzzle I had been looking to fill in. I thought it was going to be that perfect medium-sized Kuiper belt object to try out my theories. I just needed some telescopes, some computers, and some time, and everything would fall into place. I thought it would be a fun month or two to try to collect and analyze the data quickly.
I was wrong. It took me about 2 minutes to figure out almost everything that there is to know about this object and its violent history.
When I finally got home and got a chance to look a little more closely (and “a little more closely” here doesn’t mean much; as of today still nothing is known about the object except for its position for about the past two weeks), I realized two things that told the whole story. First, 2009 is YE7 bright. In absolute terms, it is the 9th brightest object, which is what led to the reasonable assumption that it is likely the 9th largest object (by absolute brightness here, I mean the brightness things would have if they were all the same distance away; some objects are bright just by virtue of being close). Second, the orbit of 2009 YE7 is tilted relative to the planets by 29 degrees. Following the position of an object for only 2 weeks doesn’t give you a precise measurement of much about its orbit, but that tilt is one thing that is solidly known even with this limited data. An angle of 29 degrees is an unusually high angle. Not too many objects are tilted by that much. But one that is is Haumea. Ah! Haumea! Haumea with its family of shards all going around the sun on orbits just like it. Tilted by 29 degrees.
2009 YE7, the brightest object discovered in the Kuiper belt in almost 5 years, is almost certainly one of the large shards (perhaps even the largest) blasted off of the surface of Haumea 4 billion years ago. 2009 YE7 and the other shards have been circling the sun on their own ever since. It is bright not because it is particularly large, but because all of the fragments of Haumea have extremely bright, reflective, icy surfaces which make them stand out against the more common darker Kuiper belt objects. 2009 YE7 is not the 9th largest Kuiper belt object; it is probably about 440 km in diameter and so in the top 50.
I will admit that I miss the old Kuiper belt. I miss the mystery and wonder of exploration of unknown territories. There will be nothing like it in solar system studies for a long time to come, I suspect. Perhaps ever. And yet, as much as exploration is thrilling and exhilarating, there is something deeply satisfying about learning about a new bright Kuiper belt object while sitting in a movie with your daughter and understanding most of its 4.5 billion year history soon after getting home. We’ve learned so much. We’ve come so far.
….
A technical aside on 2009 YE7. The tilt of the orbit alone does not prove it to be a Haumea fragment, particularly since the other parameters of the orbit are still poorly known. Above, when I say it is “almost certainly” a fragment, the assessment is a judgment based on experience, rather than a scientific fact. But I’m pretty confident, sufficiently confident that I’d be willing to bet (I need to win back some of my loss from that old 2005 bet, right?). The real confirmation, though, would come from an infrared spectrum that shows evidence of deep water ice absorption features, but that requires a pretty big telescope. Almost as good, though, would be optical colors showing it to be white (solar-colored, really) like all of the other Haumea fragments. Measuring these colors is actually quite easy; all you need is a ~1 meter telescope and ~1 night of observing. Any two photometric bands would be good. I would probably just try V and R. Then measure a solar colored standard star and compare. They will be the same, I predict. Go do it! Tell me the answer! It’s fun to make predictions, and even more fun for them to come true.
…….
I don’t actually think the exploration is finished yet. The southern skies are still largely terra incognito for the Kuiper belt. David Rabinowitz has clearly just started the journey; others are scanning out there, too. Much of what they find may indeed fit into the frame of the puzzle that we already know, but I still hope some day to open up some email and read about some new discovery and sit stunned realizing that someone just found something that I didn’t expect at all.
Book Excerpt: Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?
On allowing ourselves to see our mistakes as unique features of ourselves.
We’re the Government — and You’re Not
Peek-a-moon | Bad Astronomy
I don’t have a whole lot to add to this amazing shot from Cassini of Saturn’s moon Rhea reappearing from behind the giant moon Titan:
[Click to entitanate.]
Except: coooool. Titan is over three times the size of Rhea, and Rhea was more than twice as far from Cassini when this was taken, making Rhea look even smaller in comparison. Also, check out how the high-altitude haze in Titan’s atmosphere isn’t the same height all the way around the moon. Near the top you can see they poof up higher. If you look closely, can you see the Enterprise?
