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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.
'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.
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)....
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sigamajig...
We really need to replace Hubble with a telescope that won't challenge us so much.
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
Eight moon in the corner pocket.
Surely that's "Charon"?
And don't call me Shirly
Paul
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
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.