Slashdot Mirror
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."
The planet that's not a planet has a moon that's not there!
Perhaps it used to rotate fast, but got hit by some other asteroid in an opposing fashion, so now it rotates slowly ? Space is big (!) so this is unlikely, but if Sedna is not too far from the Kuiper belt, perhaps it's less unlikely than one might expect...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
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!
... Cue 'Hollow Sedna' theories. Oh, and a swarm of bad 'no moon, it's a space station' jokes.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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?
They said there was a very small chance that it's companion rock could be behind or in front of it, what kind of percantage are we talking about? You have to figure that the "Sedna moon" would spend at least 20% of it's time in front of or behind the planet (relative to Hubble). Imagine trying to see the moon from a telescope on Sedna, it wouldn't always be on either side, sometimes the Earth would hide it. Maybe they just need to take another photo when Hubble has another oppurtunity.
It would be surprising that Senda has a moon. After all, Sedna itself is comparable in size with our own moon (Sedna has less than 1700 Km in diameter, and our moon has around 3500 Km in size).
:-) I am sure that somebody searched for it.
Now I am wondering if our Moon has another moon orbiting around
Don't try to use the force. Do or do not, there is no try.
'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
Ho-y Sh-t! T-- Hu--le s---e te--sc--pe h-s obv------y b--n h-xor-ed by a gr--p of ha--y g--ks.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
At a distance of over 8 billion miles, Sedna is so far away it is reduced to one picture element (pixel) in the image taken in high-resolution mode with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. This image sets an upper limit on Sedna's size of 1,000 miles in diameter.
So if the so-called planet is the size of one pixel, how do they expect to see a smaller moon?
And, yes, I'm quite aware of techniques such as extrapolations, anti-aliasing etc. which *may* help extract a smaller-than-1-pixel object using a series of 35 pictures, but I'd speculate that NASA's assertion that Sedna does not have a moon is premature.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
The slow rotation maybe due to the material the planet is made out of...haven't done enough research...but the limited work i've done on planetary rotation and gravity tells me two things.
The slow rotation may account for a moon or child body which was able to escape the rotational cycle, or was flung off into space during its creation. Which is FAR FAR more likely given its distance from the sun
The other reason maybe attributed to the fact that it is beyond the astroid belt, and is the furthest satellite we've discovered yet. Although it is a small target, it maybe the solar system's first line of defense (eg a riot shield) although not a good one. That could account for both slow/erratic rotation or a missing orbital body.
How can they be sure the moon isn't behind the planet?
Kill All Humans Day
the pictures are taken using filters, not normal light, high intensity x-ray, microwave, IR...the whole deal....they are also taken in sequence, to produce multiple images of the object for sub pixel extrapolation....as a possibility described in an above post. They may have "missed it" in this round of pictures but it is highly unlikely...their guesses may have not accounted for some other gravitational body.
...France and Russia have allegedly negotiated a deal with the litte green men native to Sedna for rights to extraction of organic compounds and water for fusion fuel.
Jaques Chiraq and Vladimir Putin were unavailable for comment.
Story also here
Small info:
* Sedna is about three-fourths the size of Pluto.
* It takes 10,000 years to orbit the Sun.
* Sedna spins on its axis once every 20 Earth-days.
At a distance of over 8 billion miles, Sedna is so far away it is reduced to one picture element (pixel) in the image taken in high-resolution mode with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys.
This surprised me a lot. Hubble can take pretty (for me as a non-astronomer) pictures of objects far away and in the past (wasn't only recently something so old that it is almost the beginning of the universe?), and yet it can't take a picture of something within our system larger than a pixel... Anyone with some knowledge care to elaborate on that?
the most sexp i get is my paren-mode.
I really pity the people on Sedna. Without a moon, how can they ever hope to get to Mars?
How come Hubble can take wonderful pictures of distant nebulas and stuff, when the quality of these pictures is far from good?
Martin
it's the moon!
(the planet is hiding behind it)....
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
Getting rid of Saddam was the easy part. What's left to accomplish is *very* similar to what was asked of our soldiers forty years ago in a certain little Southeast Asian country: winning the hearts and minds of the people after we've bombed the fuck out of them. It can't be done; it's never worked and never will, and our faithfully obedient soldiers are going to keep dying nasty for it until we throw in the towel and bring them home. If you think we've won, you're *really* not paying attention...
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.
"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
- Donald Rumsfeld.
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
we went to war and WON
You know, in the past, most people have waited until the other guys stopped killing them before claiming a victory.
Maybe someone should go out there and tell all those Iraqi irregulars that you guys have WON, and so could they please stop blowing shit up?
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
Here you go. Asteroid Ida and it's little moon "Dactyl".
Dactyl is about 0.75 x 0.8 x 1.0 miles in size. Imagine that!! Imagine sitting on Dactyl and orbiting Ida. Now, I'm not sure if a rock of 1 mile in diameter can even hold you down.
Does anyone know how to calculate your weight on Dactyl? Size listed above and it's probably 2.2 - 2.9 grams per cubic centimeter.
The world would really be a much better place if wisdom and common sense were a lot more common.
..
The world would be a whole lot better if people like you weren't so easily led into drawing lines in the sand for people to spill their blood into
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
... the future of that project. The absence of a natural moon which could have been modified a will certainly put a huge dent in G.W's budget since it forces him build from scratch the fortress-moon/deathstar needed to defend US intrests in the region. Then there is the matter of the pesky natives ....
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Exactly why do so many (or is it a vocal few?) people seem to have a problem with the fact that we went to war and WON?
Uhhm, because it was an unjust war ? Because it was opposed by everyone (outside the USA) ?? Because it was done for OIL ? Because the USA is using Israeli tactics there now, punishing people for cellective guilt ? Do you need more reasons ?
What if Bush creates funding for research that leads to a cure for cancer, is the left then going to complain about Bush's henchmen in lab-coats invading the soverign territory owned by the tumors?
This is called the "straw-man" argument. You build yourelf a straw-man to attack. Please try to be more logical in your speach.
They support terrorists because terrorists are useful to them. Terrorists attack the very people they most want to see done in, namely anyone ...
There are no terrorists in Iraq .. Or at least there were'nt before the USA started bombing everything there and puting the country's future wealth in it's pockets. (In the form of reconstruction-contracts).
Wasn't there some guy who once said "As you sow, so shall you reap ?"
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Okay, so the planet is not a planet. Its an asteroid. That means surely even if there was a 'moon', it couldn't be called a moon, since it doesn't orbit a planet.
Maybe the article should say. Asteroid does not have satellite orbiting it. Still, I suppose that sounds far less interesting.
Maybe the slower rotation speed is just enough needed to keep it on a stable trajectory with earth. It's probably made of naquadria.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
- Donald Rumsfeld.
So Doland Rumsfeld thinks there might be a Moon there after all ??
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
We can think of 4 possibilities for why we do not see a moon around Sedna.
Most informative post on slashdot, ever. Thanks Civil, you opened my mind clogged with too much cheap space op
BTW, his site has more information on Sedna.
Sedna is.. or was classified as, anyway, a Kuyper Belt Object (KBO) so it does not follow the naming system used for other objects. KBO objects are named after gods and goddesses of creations..
Oh, and Inuits would be offended if you call them Red Indian. Any native Americans would, in fact, but Inuits are not even 'red'.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
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
According to it's discoverer, Sedna never enters the region of the Kuiper belt(farthest distance Kuiper belt extends to is 50 AU) and sedna never comes closer than 76 AU. So it's not a KBO.
It's interpolation, not extrapolation. They're infering detail between data points, not extending beyond them. :-)
Or the missing moon was hit....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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.
maybe the moon is *behind* sedna, playing hide 'n seek
No encryption can withstand the power of the Lucky Guess.
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
Subscribe for free to my show!
When plants are completely extracted of all their dark matter...
Has someone saved the animals yet? Nibbler?
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
The inner system never sleeps. The outer system never wakes.
Sounds deep, but unfortunately, it is incorrect. Mercury (it doesn't get more "inner" than that) "sleeps" a great deal. Due to its eccentric orbit and bizzarrely-coordinated orbital period and rotational period, a single day on Mercury lasts as long as two of its years! That is to say, its rotational period is exactly two-thirds of its orbital period, meaning "nighttime" on Mercury lasts several Earth months. That's a lot of "sleeping" for a planet in the inner system which, according to you, never sleeps.
Incidentally, while we generally presume Mercury to be a very hot place (and it is, during the day), the temperature on side of the planet that is in nighttime can drop to -150 degrees Celcius.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
I stand corrected, but perhaps the KBO naming convention applies to trans-KBO objects too? Certainly makes better sense than reverting to the standard planetary naming scheme.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Dyou guys think Richard Hoagland will manage to find some alien artifacts in those big pixels?
Are astrologers calling Sedna a "planet" or an "asteroid" - ? Since the 50's they've been waiting to ease the burden on Mercury and Venus, who currently have to rule two signs at once (Mercury rules Gemini and Virgo, Venus rules Taurus and Libra.) I've been reading an astrological course book from 1952, and they were absolutely convinced, since they'd just found Pluto, that there would be at least 2 more planets behind it, one to rule Gemini and one to rule Taurus. (Personally, I think new planets should take over for Virgo and Libra, but that's my modern opinion.)
Offtopic? Only if you've never read a horoscope.
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I want to say how refreshing it is in this day and age that a man can admit that he possibly made a mistake, or that even better, he doesn't really know. Taking some responsibility is nice to see nowadays. I know this scientist doesn't hold a publicly elected position, so he can say things off the cuff. I've probably just been watching too much c-span lately.
Th
Saturn's moon Titan is thought to be covered with a petroleum ocean. A probe will drop into it from the Casini orbiter in January 2005.
So, by your definition, Germany never conquered France in WW2? Because the irregulars didn't give up. Hmmmm, I better have some one rewrite my history books.
CmdrTaco must be slacking again, he didn't even catch that 'suprise' was spelled wrong...
Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?
Amazing we can get the Hubble to take pictures of distant galaxies, but a picture of a planet in our Solar System comes out as crappy as my channel 57.
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Any enlightened thinkers care to explain?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Is THAT how the lyric goes?
I always thought it was "there's a bathroom on the right".
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
"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.
That's no moon! It's a space station!
How hard is it to run a spell checker before posting a story.. It is one thing for quoted material inside a posting to have misspelling, but the headline? That's just sad.
> * It takes 10,000 years to orbit the Sun.
> * Sedna spins on its axis once every 20 Earth-days.
So, in Sedna years, I am only 0.0273 years (498 days ) old! That explains a few things...
"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"
I'd like to see you prove you don't have any dual-use technology. Bold assertion is not sufficient reason to go to war.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
So, by your definition, Germany never conquered France in WW2? Because the irregulars didn't give up.
In France, the Nazis did a pretty good job of pacifying the country - they were able to use France's industrial base to supplement their own. We can't seem to keep cities under our control, much less rebuild the place.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Hephastus hasn't been used (I don't think)
You've obviously never heard of the planet Vulcan... duh.
Or not drunk enough.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
No, by my definition, Germany sucessfully invaded France, but did not win the war.
The successful invasion of a country and the overthrow of its government is not the same as winning a war.
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
I take it, by rest of the world, you would be refering to the French and Spanish speaking countries, as well as Russia (who were also buying oil extraction equipment from the French) and some other interested parties, mainly around the middle east.
By "the rest of the world" I was referign to the people of the world.. There were protests on scales not seen since the Vietnam War almost everywhere in the World..
I AM refering to the leaders of countries, not the punters, who really can't make all that much difference to a government if they have 12+ months before an election
Leaders of countries participated many, not because they agreeded that the war was a good idea, but because, by not participating, would have ment punishment from the USA.
The former financial minister of Pakistan, for example, was told by the USA that "If you don't do what we want you to do, we will destroy your economy." He revealed this on a "HardTalk" interview on BBC. Andm yes, he was refering to USA's "War on terrorism."
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Don't allow Hubble to fall back to Earth. It is still doing good science and can for years to come. New modules for Hubble have already been built and tested and only await a shutle mission to be installed. Call your congressman / woman today. Here is some info from the Mars Society on the work to save Hubble.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Er, yeah. I think you got me the wrong way round. I was quoting Rumsfeld because I think that particular quote is one of the most self-evidently dumbassed things that he has ever said, and that says a lot.
I mean, even if you agree with him that the mere possibility that Iraq might have had WMDs and that if so they might have donne something bad with them was enough reason to go to war, even if you go along with all that, his statement does rather lead one to question why we bothered with all those years of weapons inspections in the first place.
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
-
The space station and hubble are within the ionosphere.
-
Sedna is 90% of the way to the heliopause, which is the edge of the solar system.
-
Sedna is farther from us than any man-made device, including Pioneer 10 and both Voyagers.
-
The Oort cloud covers an entire order of magnitude, and then some. That means the far edge is over 10 times further than the near edge. Its volume absolutely dwarfs the solar system.
Fascinating stuff.Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
http://www.space1999.net/~catacombs/main/tscript/z 01b.html
Maybe it just happens to be an object that doesn't rotate that fast. What am I missing here? If you throw a whole bunch of balls randomly into space, some will rotate fast and some won't, right? So they just happened to find one that doesn't rotate that fast. What is the *theoretical* argument that says such objects ought to rotate faster? Isn't the rotation just based simply on the sum of the angular forces imparted on the object?
It seems to me that we should expect there to be a wide distribution of rotations, and that we should be surprised *not* to find the occasional object with a slower than average rotation.
I would expect the rotation speeds to range all the way from zero to whatever speed they can handle before flying apart into smaller pieces.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The scientific paper refers to the object as follows:
The title of the paper is Discovery of a candidate inner Oort cloud planetoid
And the first line of the abstract is We report the discovery of the minor planet 2003 VB12 (popularly named Sedna), the most distant object ever seen in the solar system.
So, there you have it.. either a Oort cloud planetoid or a minor planet.. take your pick.
Forgive what may be an ignorant question - but how does having a moon slow down a planet's rotation? You mention angular momentum, but I have trouble seeing how that applies given that the moon and the planet are not connected (i.e. can't the moon and planet each have separate angular momentums? How does angular momentum of the moon get attached to the planet's angular momentum so that they act as a system?). I'm pretty curious how this works.
Escape velocity would have been more informative, which using your values of r and rho comes out to .9 m/s or about 3.2 km/hr. Just trying to walk would cause you to fly off the surface, though I guess you'd still be stuck orbiting Ida.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
There are several standards: The losing government surrenders. The losing government is wiped out of exitence (as in Iraq.) The losing government flees and disperses. There are probably others.
Rogue guerillas and isolated fractions of a defeated army do not constitute a government still in power, or a war not yet won. We're fighting anarchy and new potential dictators now.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
It's a gas station.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Because Soviet Russia was a bigger threat than any third world country was. The US through it served their interests in containing the spread of communism to arm Iraq against Iran.
That's a new one. The way I always heard it was that Iraq was fighting a war against Iran, who was our enemy. And how do you think the Iraqis got MiG jets and Russian tanks? The russians didn't like the Iranians either! It wasn't the Russians we were trying to fight, it was the Iranians.
Becuase it was an election year, and he didn't want to have to deal with the bloodshed that is going on now back then. He would have been re-elected too, if it hadn't been for Perot.
Yes!!! Finally one of you admits that Bush is going down in November!
I don't see it that way, wars are usually struggles over resources. While left leaning people are saying Iraq is over oil, and the righties are claiming its about the freedom of the Iraqi people it's really about striking fear into leaders of other muslim states.
If it's about resources, then planning and equal distribution would prevent war. If it's about religion, it's a little harder, but appearing non-threatening and friendly is a great way to keep religions from not liking you. Maybe it's about fear, but if we have to make people afraid of us in order to be secure, we have big issues. Why not try to make people like us instead of being feared?
Yeah it sucks, but until resources are unlimited and all men and women are equal in every way, there will be violence. Religion also seems to be a driving factor twards war historically. Maybe one day we will get over the violence of ancestors, but I doubt it. I hoped after the cold war the world would see a few hundred years of peace, but no dice. Maybe someday.
No, when people see that violence is wrong, and when it is not tolerated by all societies, then war will end. People who claim that war is necessary provide justification. War is not necessary. The more people who think this, the less war will be an option, and the more peaceful the world will become.
As for resources: Greed causes shortage, and greed is rewarded under capitalism, therefore capitalism, just like Marx said, causes war.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I told you it was supposed to be called Mondas, which also doesn't have a moon. What will it take to rename this, a cyberman invasion?
As any southerner can tell you, the yank's ideas about when a war has been won are pretty screwed up. We killed twice as many of them as we lost and they still ain't welcome. They think its over, but we'll send those carpetbaggers home yet.
You know, in the past, most people have waited until the other guys stopped killing them before claiming a victory.
Just as a side tangent, I'm not sure the mass media world we live in even allows for a decisive victory like we've seen in the past. Usually, you bomb/raid/destroy the hell out of a place to the point where they're just 'done' and you step in and say "heya, here's your new constitution. let's get to work rebuilding you.". Sure, you can say "it just makes them madder" and "that just creates more hate..." Yeah, it does to a point, until you cross this ruthless threshhold and something breaks in the human mind where they are "done". IE, what was done to germany. What was done to japan. Those countries were "broken".
And I don't care what you say about the iRaq war, and I in no way mean to diminish the horror of war, but that just isn't what was done there. For better or worse (i dont really have an opinion, just trying to form one) we are much more about trying to refactor countries instead of rewriting them, often for PR reasons and often for economic reasons.
Sorry Jim Bob, I done tried that onced before, and tain't gonna stop them revenuers.
its a death star type thing that we left for ourselves when we left mars, and when we are able to visit it, it will tell us all our secrets. :)
What if Sedna is the surviving moon of the planet which would make up the Kupier belt? Would that account for the slow rotation factor?
Also, are the namers playing with words?
From Webster's On-line Dictionary:
One entry found for sedentary.
Main Entry: sedentary
Pronunciation: 'se-d&n-"ter-E
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French sedentaire, from Latin sedentarius, from sedent-, sedens, present participle of sedEre to sit -- more at SIT
1 : not migratory : SETTLED
2 : doing or requiring much sitting
3 : permanently attached
Get the Top 10 Search Results for "sedentary"
For More Information on "sedentary" go to Britannica.com
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
That would mean that somewhere, someplace a politician has told the truth. :-9>
Not going to happen./
I would appreciate any feedback into this as I don't have any idea myself....
Let the Wookiee make the lame Star Wars jokes.
Aptal soru yoktur; sadece merakli aptallar vardir.
"democratizing Iraq is a powerful and positive paradigm shift for the Iraqi people and the entire region."
The question is: What happens if, after giving these people democracy, they vote in Shia leaders who have a religous agenda?
--
This sig is inoffensive.
(Score:-1, Insightful)
almost as good as +5 Troll
Snowden and Manning are heroes.