In the CBAT attached to Caroline's story it is stated clearly that the discovery image was taken by Jack Newton's telescope. The equipment owned by Carolina (and her family) isn't fit for an automated search. It doesn't rule out a manual search, but it is highly unlikely.
I agree it is an amazing feat, but I just wish the summary gave credit where credit was due: to all co-discoverers.
It isn't capable of a core collapse supernova. Sirius A weighs only 2 solar masses, about 7 solar masses short of the limit for a star to go supernova. However, there is a chance that Sirius B would accrete sufficient matter from Sirius A when it become a red giant. This would require a) that Sirius A grows beyond the Roche lobe b) that about 0.4 solar masses are transferred.
I strongly doubt that condition A will be met, since Sirius B is far enough from A to be resolved in small telescopes (if you manage to cope with the brightness difference). According to Wikipedia, a similar system called IK Pegasi is the closest supernova candidate at 150ly. This system is also not yet in the mass transfer stage.
We will have to wait for about 700-800 million years to see what will happen...
Indeed, she is working on Tim Puckett's search team. Tim Puckett is a very driven amateur supernova hunter who collaborates with a number of other observers, like Jack Newton, who is the other co-discoverer listed. They collect massive amounts of data each night with semi and full automatic telescopes Basically they don't have the time to sift through all of it. Hence they created a search team of amateurs looking through their data. Caroline was part of this search team. Tim Puckett and his team have discovered hundreds of supernovae so far and show no sign of stopping.
She didn't spent hours on end in the dark staring through a telescope. She didn't put up her own supernova search (which is more or less impossible for a 14yo, due to the huge financial step you have to take and the amount of time it takes). She spent hours looking through images generated by automatic telescopes. It is great that she had the dedication to go through it but it isn't very hard. If you go through enough data it is certain you will find a supernova (I believe they find a supernova on 1 image out of 9000). The hard part is setting up a telescope to scan the sky, calibrate each image and present it to you.
It does disservice to the "co-discoverers" to not mention them in the summary. Without them Caroline Moore likely wouldn't have had data to sift through. I don't know the exact story but the part of each discoverer is probably: Tim Puckett coordinates the supernova search program, Jack Newton made the discovery image and Caroline Moore noticed the supernova.
As a last note. The days of amateur supernova hunting are quite numbered. Two large professional telescopes with aim to provide close to 24 hour surveillance of the sky will come online in the comming years. LSST and PanStarrs will sweep the skies with large apertures, huge CCD camera's and an impressive field of view. When those projects are running amateurs will have to aim for the holes that aren't observed...
I am from Belgium and we have no place left that's truly dark. Nothing. It is pollution and it's being called pollution for good reasons. Your reasoning could be used for all sorts of pollution. That brown sky, that thick thing you think is air, well, that's the price of civilization. Mind, please, don't smoke near that river, it might catch fire, but, yeah, that's the price of civilization. Don't you just love my new mobile phone that was produced by this fine civilization.
2. There are sometimes disastrous effects on the ecosystem
3. The fact that something as natural as darkness is completely disappearing should ring a bell that it is indeed pollution. I don't have to drive 20 minutes to reach "clean" water, "clean" air, but I have to drive 1000 km (or swim) to reach "clean" skies.
4. It is a waste of energy.
It hurts to hear this coming from a fellow amateur astronomer. I accept the need to illuminate roads and to some extent private property. But it is done horribly wrong in 99% of the cases. Why does the lightning that illuminates the road in front of my house also need to illuminate the inside of my bedroom which is 20ft up and behind the pole? Why does that bill board have to be illuminated all night long? Why do the fancy stores not shut their lights after closing time, just like we are supposed to do at our jobs, you know, for environmental reasons?
Even with proper installed lightning it won't be completely dark in our cities and maybe the Milky Way won't be visible either until you reach the suburbs. But both the environment, our health, our electricity bill and the night sky will profit from it. And maybe I don't have to drive 1000km to reach some pristine skies like I have to do now (French Provence).
Regards
PS. there are dark skies closer than the French Provence to Belgium, but well, the Provence got better weather, wine, food,... and if you plan to go observing for a week those are added bonuses. The nearest dark sites are probably 400-500km from here. Too far for one night...
If you don't know what a HHR is, like I did till 2 minutes ago: Don't google it. You're better of not knowing what it is...
Darn, and I thought the PT Cruiser was an abomination. Can you guys please do us, Europeans, a favor and let those car building dinosaurs die?
Yes, water at 1600ÂF is just vapor here on earth, but it could be liquid (or ice!) on a gas giant.
Nope, it couldn't 1600 degrees F is well above the critical temperature of water. You can't speak about liquids above this temperature, let alone solids. At the bottom of the ocean the pressure goes up to 1200 atmosphere, while the temperature is not much higher than 4 degrees C - it is still liquid.
If you push hard enough, you might get something like metallic hydrogen, but by then you long left the realm of normal matter and temperatures where molecules form (which most scientists agree are needed for life). At least in space, where you can only reach those pressures by packing a lot of matter together, which tends to get really hot.
Think of it this way: Step out at night and look at the stars and whatever planet happens to be in view. Now, step out the next night at precisely the same time (ok, to be fair, a couple minutes later) and look again. The stars are in the same spot, but the planet has moved.
About four minutes earlier each day in fact: A sidereal day is: 23h56m4.090530833s. You can easily verify this now. The easily recognizable Orion constellation is now rising around 10pm, look for it in a month at 8pm and you'll find it at the same spot.
If it is just big enough to take out your desktop you might be whistling indeed: it'll instantly be more worth than whatever you paid for the desktop, the games you might not be able to play any longer and the damage it did to the roof. Just remember to make enough fuss about it to the media...
And that's not even counting the stone, which will probably wheigh in over 1kg and will be worth anything between $1 to tens or even hundreds per gram depending on it's kind.
This kind of meteorites have already hit a few houses and cars in the past centuries, the most famous are the Peekskill meteorite and the Hodges meteorite.
Unless you have a serious speaking disorder, Haumea is not pronounced like "homo" in Dutch.
The "au" in Haumea is pronounced like the "ow" in "how", and the "ea" are pronouced seperately.
The "o"'s in "homo" are just "o"'s like in "homo sapiens".
It actually sounds exactly like it would sound in Hawaiian. Dutch and Hawaiian phonology are rather similar (unlike Dutch and English). Pronouncing it like "homo" would just mean you're doing it wrong in both languages.
Ok, that explains why the police force here equips speeding cameras with the 1D MKIII... I thought it was overkill, since a 40D would probably do a fine job at it as well - and save $3000/camera in the process.
-55C to -125C - really? I can't see that being very useful. Except for a trip to Neptune.
-55: How about Antarctica, The North Pole, Canada in Winter, Siberia,...
125: Stuff near big engines, in rockets, in jets,... Cooling electronics in a tank in the middle of a 60 degree desert ain't that easy, for example (Big ventilation holes just make interesting targets for RPGs).
Because you don't need in such circumstances, doesn't mean noone needs it. And if there's something good at making up needs in extreme conditions it's the military...
Actually, the lenses here are "just" a corrector of a 500 Megapixel camera (FTA). The light gathering is done by the Blanco 4-meter telescope. The camera will have a huge field of view (for a professional telescope) of 2.2 degrees.
Why lenses and not mirrors as corrector? Because mirrors reflect light and you have to either work with tilted mirrors or tolerate obstruction. Tilted mirrors as corrector would require very complex surfaces (read assymmetrical, aspherical,...) which would actually be more difficult to figure than a 1m lens (which might also have quite complex surfaces, but at least symmetrical).
As for the maximum field of view of amateur telescopes: My 200mm f/4.5 (900mm focal length) Newtonian yields a 2.7 degree field of view with a 31mm Nagler eyepiece. A commercially available 114mm f/4.5 Newtonian would yield a 4.9 degree field of view with that eyepiece. And my little 80mm F/5.5 apochromatic refractor would yield a 5.8 degree FOV. These extremely large field of views give delicious views of the Milky Way by the way... The days of 1 degree Max FOV are long past...
Pff, nonsense. Everyone who owns a telescope knows he should flip it or the optics in it at least daily. Certainly if you have a larger telescope, like my 14" Newtonian. Even little ones benefit from a daily flip. I've seen no degradation in any of my telescopes.
At least that's what they told me at my first Star Party.
At 6AM
After way too much beer...
You mean I may have been fooled? That I spent 8 years of flipping 30 kgs of tube for nothing?? I barely dared to go on holiday!!! Wait till I get my hands on that guy and I'll show him how much his 20" deforms when I shove it where the sun doesn't shine. And I don't mean the tube it sits in!!!!
Most likely, those planets don't have seasons. Just like the Moon, Charon, Pluto and most other big moons they will face their sun with the same side because of tidal locking. And being so close to their sun-like star doesn't bode well for the presence of an atmosphere either. The result is a really crisp sun side and a very, very cold interstellar space side...
Slashdot Mirror
In the CBAT attached to Caroline's story it is stated clearly that the discovery image was taken by Jack Newton's telescope. The equipment owned by Carolina (and her family) isn't fit for an automated search. It doesn't rule out a manual search, but it is highly unlikely.
I agree it is an amazing feat, but I just wish the summary gave credit where credit was due: to all co-discoverers.
It isn't capable of a core collapse supernova. Sirius A weighs only 2 solar masses, about 7 solar masses short of the limit for a star to go supernova. However, there is a chance that Sirius B would accrete sufficient matter from Sirius A when it become a red giant. This would require a) that Sirius A grows beyond the Roche lobe b) that about 0.4 solar masses are transferred. I strongly doubt that condition A will be met, since Sirius B is far enough from A to be resolved in small telescopes (if you manage to cope with the brightness difference). According to Wikipedia, a similar system called IK Pegasi is the closest supernova candidate at 150ly. This system is also not yet in the mass transfer stage. We will have to wait for about 700-800 million years to see what will happen...
Indeed, she is working on Tim Puckett's search team. Tim Puckett is a very driven amateur supernova hunter who collaborates with a number of other observers, like Jack Newton, who is the other co-discoverer listed. They collect massive amounts of data each night with semi and full automatic telescopes Basically they don't have the time to sift through all of it. Hence they created a search team of amateurs looking through their data. Caroline was part of this search team. Tim Puckett and his team have discovered hundreds of supernovae so far and show no sign of stopping.
She didn't spent hours on end in the dark staring through a telescope. She didn't put up her own supernova search (which is more or less impossible for a 14yo, due to the huge financial step you have to take and the amount of time it takes). She spent hours looking through images generated by automatic telescopes. It is great that she had the dedication to go through it but it isn't very hard. If you go through enough data it is certain you will find a supernova (I believe they find a supernova on 1 image out of 9000). The hard part is setting up a telescope to scan the sky, calibrate each image and present it to you.
It does disservice to the "co-discoverers" to not mention them in the summary. Without them Caroline Moore likely wouldn't have had data to sift through. I don't know the exact story but the part of each discoverer is probably: Tim Puckett coordinates the supernova search program, Jack Newton made the discovery image and Caroline Moore noticed the supernova.
References:
Tim Puckett's website
Jack Newton's website
Caroline's story
As a last note. The days of amateur supernova hunting are quite numbered. Two large professional telescopes with aim to provide close to 24 hour surveillance of the sky will come online in the comming years. LSST and PanStarrs will sweep the skies with large apertures, huge CCD camera's and an impressive field of view. When those projects are running amateurs will have to aim for the holes that aren't observed...
I am from Belgium and we have no place left that's truly dark. Nothing. It is pollution and it's being called pollution for good reasons. Your reasoning could be used for all sorts of pollution. That brown sky, that thick thing you think is air, well, that's the price of civilization. Mind, please, don't smoke near that river, it might catch fire, but, yeah, that's the price of civilization. Don't you just love my new mobile phone that was produced by this fine civilization.
1. There are Health effects
2. There are sometimes disastrous effects on the ecosystem
3. The fact that something as natural as darkness is completely disappearing should ring a bell that it is indeed pollution. I don't have to drive 20 minutes to reach "clean" water, "clean" air, but I have to drive 1000 km (or swim) to reach "clean" skies.
4. It is a waste of energy.
It hurts to hear this coming from a fellow amateur astronomer. I accept the need to illuminate roads and to some extent private property. But it is done horribly wrong in 99% of the cases. Why does the lightning that illuminates the road in front of my house also need to illuminate the inside of my bedroom which is 20ft up and behind the pole? Why does that bill board have to be illuminated all night long? Why do the fancy stores not shut their lights after closing time, just like we are supposed to do at our jobs, you know, for environmental reasons?
Even with proper installed lightning it won't be completely dark in our cities and maybe the Milky Way won't be visible either until you reach the suburbs. But both the environment, our health, our electricity bill and the night sky will profit from it. And maybe I don't have to drive 1000km to reach some pristine skies like I have to do now (French Provence).
Regards
PS. there are dark skies closer than the French Provence to Belgium, but well, the Provence got better weather, wine, food, ... and if you plan to go observing for a week those are added bonuses. The nearest dark sites are probably 400-500km from here. Too far for one night...
If you don't know what a HHR is, like I did till 2 minutes ago: Don't google it. You're better of not knowing what it is... Darn, and I thought the PT Cruiser was an abomination. Can you guys please do us, Europeans, a favor and let those car building dinosaurs die?
IE8 is so uncompliant it is approaching compliant from the other side...
That image only contains the trajectories of 20-something large fragments, not the 20000+ smaller ones which they are still charting.
Ehm, if you park your car in front of you house and King Kong throws it in a building, you can't be held responsible for the ensuing parking ticket?
And gently float away as Newton and his law of action and reaction have a little chat with you...
And it all came about because it's hard to achieve 1000C in a shed more than once and keep it intact.
fixed it for you...
When I hit the gas, though, ...
And thus the Turbo button returned
So "BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT, wrong!" would have been appropriate? And you totally messed up that chance...
PV=nRT
Yes, water at 1600ÂF is just vapor here on earth, but it could be liquid (or ice!) on a gas giant.
Nope, it couldn't 1600 degrees F is well above the critical temperature of water. You can't speak about liquids above this temperature, let alone solids. At the bottom of the ocean the pressure goes up to 1200 atmosphere, while the temperature is not much higher than 4 degrees C - it is still liquid.
If you push hard enough, you might get something like metallic hydrogen, but by then you long left the realm of normal matter and temperatures where molecules form (which most scientists agree are needed for life). At least in space, where you can only reach those pressures by packing a lot of matter together, which tends to get really hot.
Think of it this way: Step out at night and look at the stars and whatever planet happens to be in view. Now, step out the next night at precisely the same time (ok, to be fair, a couple minutes later) and look again. The stars are in the same spot, but the planet has moved.
About four minutes earlier each day in fact: A sidereal day is: 23h56m4.090530833s. You can easily verify this now. The easily recognizable Orion constellation is now rising around 10pm, look for it in a month at 8pm and you'll find it at the same spot.
Or get a very funny Darwin Award...
the universe is not steady-state, and in fact is quite young (13.7 Gy) compared to the age of the Earth (4.55 Gy).
You compare 13.7Gy to 4.55Gy and call the former "quite young"? How old are you guys with 4 digit User ID's??
So now that I figured that there are at least 8k Great Old Ones on Slashdot, how long before I dissappear from the face of the Earth?
If it is just big enough to take out your desktop you might be whistling indeed: it'll instantly be more worth than whatever you paid for the desktop, the games you might not be able to play any longer and the damage it did to the roof. Just remember to make enough fuss about it to the media...
And that's not even counting the stone, which will probably wheigh in over 1kg and will be worth anything between $1 to tens or even hundreds per gram depending on it's kind.
This kind of meteorites have already hit a few houses and cars in the past centuries, the most famous are the Peekskill meteorite and the Hodges meteorite.
Unless you have a serious speaking disorder, Haumea is not pronounced like "homo" in Dutch.
The "au" in Haumea is pronounced like the "ow" in "how", and the "ea" are pronouced seperately.
The "o"'s in "homo" are just "o"'s like in "homo sapiens".
It actually sounds exactly like it would sound in Hawaiian. Dutch and Hawaiian phonology are rather similar (unlike Dutch and English). Pronouncing it like "homo" would just mean you're doing it wrong in both languages.
Nothing to see here, please move along...
Ok, that explains why the police force here equips speeding cameras with the 1D MKIII... I thought it was overkill, since a 40D would probably do a fine job at it as well - and save $3000/camera in the process.
-55C to -125C - really? I can't see that being very useful. Except for a trip to Neptune.
-55: How about Antarctica, The North Pole, Canada in Winter, Siberia, ...
125: Stuff near big engines, in rockets, in jets, ... Cooling electronics in a tank in the middle of a 60 degree desert ain't that easy, for example (Big ventilation holes just make interesting targets for RPGs).
Because you don't need in such circumstances, doesn't mean noone needs it. And if there's something good at making up needs in extreme conditions it's the military...
Pfff, we don't take laws from that hypocrite. He's had more that 3 strikes on his neck because of his reforms and he's still in office...
Actually, the lenses here are "just" a corrector of a 500 Megapixel camera (FTA). The light gathering is done by the Blanco 4-meter telescope. The camera will have a huge field of view (for a professional telescope) of 2.2 degrees.
Why lenses and not mirrors as corrector? Because mirrors reflect light and you have to either work with tilted mirrors or tolerate obstruction. Tilted mirrors as corrector would require very complex surfaces (read assymmetrical, aspherical, ...) which would actually be more difficult to figure than a 1m lens (which might also have quite complex surfaces, but at least symmetrical).
As for the maximum field of view of amateur telescopes: My 200mm f/4.5 (900mm focal length) Newtonian yields a 2.7 degree field of view with a 31mm Nagler eyepiece. A commercially available 114mm f/4.5 Newtonian would yield a 4.9 degree field of view with that eyepiece. And my little 80mm F/5.5 apochromatic refractor would yield a 5.8 degree FOV. These extremely large field of views give delicious views of the Milky Way by the way... The days of 1 degree Max FOV are long past...
On the plus side, the days on that shelf will be short as they will make sure your body weight stays constant.
I.e, nothing goes in or out...
That includes air...
Most humans don't last much longer than 5 minutes in such circumstances
But it's a small price to provide science with a standard, isn't?
Pff, nonsense. Everyone who owns a telescope knows he should flip it or the optics in it at least daily. Certainly if you have a larger telescope, like my 14" Newtonian. Even little ones benefit from a daily flip. I've seen no degradation in any of my telescopes.
At least that's what they told me at my first Star Party.
At 6AM
After way too much beer...
You mean I may have been fooled? That I spent 8 years of flipping 30 kgs of tube for nothing?? I barely dared to go on holiday!!! Wait till I get my hands on that guy and I'll show him how much his 20" deforms when I shove it where the sun doesn't shine. And I don't mean the tube it sits in!!!!
Most likely, those planets don't have seasons. Just like the Moon, Charon, Pluto and most other big moons they will face their sun with the same side because of tidal locking. And being so close to their sun-like star doesn't bode well for the presence of an atmosphere either. The result is a really crisp sun side and a very, very cold interstellar space side...