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Hubble Photo of Sedna Suprises Astronomers
waynegoode writes "Soon after the announcement of the discovery of Sedna, the solar system's furthest object and planet wanna-be, the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed at it to answer some of the many questions its discovery generated. The photos were released today and are surprising for what they don't show--a moon. Astronomers were certain it had a moon because of its slow rotation. "I'm completely baffled at the absence of a moon," says Michael Brown, Sedna's discoverer. Story and photo at Universe Today, hubblesite and NASA press release."
When will G.W. announce a manned mission to look for oil?
"Well, it took an hour to write, I thought it would take an hour to read."
It's an absence of a space station!
with all of my astronomical knowledge the only thing i can come up with is aliens playing some sort of april's fools day joke. but this begs to ask "do alien's celebrate april fool's day or some other weird alien day?" maybe they don't call it april
any other interesting things that didn't happen today?
the sun rose so it can't be that....
water is still wet...
i'm baffled.
Maybe Earth, Sedna and "Sedna moon" are co-linear?
'Astronomers were surprised by what they did not see, a moon. The hubble telescope helped solve the problem when honed onto Sedna itself. The planet's oddly erratic, eliptical orbit is due to a giant mass on it's far side. Colon Powell presented the Hubble photographs today in a speech before the United Nations. The photographs detail the until now, 'unknown mass' that was altering Sedna's orbit. "It is clear from these photos" he said "that we have found the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction".
It is unclear how Saddam Hussein delivered and stockpiled the weapons on Sedna, but the blury photographic proof shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the administration was in the Right from the beginning. NASA was unavailable for comment.
It's just had to change its name and location, due to an interstellar court action from Microsoft, which has claimed that the term "lunar" infringes on the term "Windows", given the obvious phonetic similarity.
When Sedna's lu--r object has found a new name, and shaken off Microsoft's legal team, it will reappear.
Except in Benelux.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Its more likely to have had a moon that slowed its rotation but then the moon somehow got lost.
Things can get messy out there in the kupier belt. Its not a place where you want to be alone late at night.
This is my sig, show me yours
I really pity the people on Sedna. Without a moon, how can they ever hope to get to Mars?
it's the moon!
(the planet is hiding behind it)....
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
I hope that clears up any confusion about whether or not Sedna has a moon lurking behind it.
If that's a planet start calling it Rupert, please...
We really need to replace Hubble with a telescope that won't challenge us so much.
OMG! Ida looks like a mummy sarcofagus! It must have been put there by the the same people who built the pyramids and the cydonia structures.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
That's no moon.....Look out Luke!
Basic probability: even if it got hit by an asteroid, the chances that it had exactly the amount of momentum to slow down Sedna's angular velocity to near-zero would be infinitesimal.
Basic Improbability: The universe is so very big that any event, no matter how improbable, must occur somewhere and sometime.
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The graph to show me how big things are in the universe is too big to display in any meaningful way on my monitor. I like it.
-Colin
How come Hubble can take wonderful pictures of distant nebulas and stuff, when the quality of these pictures is far from good?
Easy, Hubble is farsighted.
In the outskirts of the solar system it's always night...
The inner system never sleeps. The oute system never wakes.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
that's a DeathStar ...and it is hiding behind jupiter now... on it's way to find a suitable testplanet to test it's fully operational weapon systems.
Brilliant! You figured it out when all others could not. It's so simple in retorspect: Superman ran backwards around Sedna, causing it to both go back in time and slow down it's rotation!
stuff
What about the chances of an asteroid knocking the missing moon out of orbit?
It's turtles all the way down.
Eight moon in the corner pocket.
You think any respectable moon is going to hang around a mere planetoid???
Sure, things were going great till we discovered her... Sedna had convinced the moon he was all that and a bag of potatoes. But as soon as the moon heard the word on the street that her man wasn't even big enough to be considered a planet....
Its just like the saying goes... in some relationships, size *does* matter.
The moon is a superdense glob, set in a special orbit around Sedna, specifically to attract our attention. We have to alter its orbit in order to indicate that we are ready to be inducted into the Federation of Sentient Planets.
This clearly, totally demonstrates why we no longer need the Hubble! With our advanced Earthbound technology, we can resolve Sedna and its moons without the assistance of an orbital observation platform and....
oh wait.
Never mind.
See more Sedna
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Until the stars are right... Somewhere out there is Yuggoth.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
When plants are completely extracted of all their dark matter...
Has someone saved the animals yet? Nibbler?
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Surely that's "Charon"?
And don't call me Shirly
Paul
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Dyou guys think Richard Hoagland will manage to find some alien artifacts in those big pixels?
Here is a low bandwidth picture of Sedna: Thank you Hubble.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
"Hubble Photo of Sedan Suprises Astronomers"
I immediately pictured astronomers scratching their heads over Hubble photos of my former '86 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, named "Plum" (for the color, and short for "Plum Tuckered Out")... zooming through the far reaches of space.
So it DID go to car heaven!!
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
Hephastus hasn't been used (I don't think)
You've obviously never heard of the planet Vulcan... duh.
It's a gas station.
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