Re: Planet X: MAY Coordinates [OT]

Michael Edelman wrote:
> 
> Nancy Lieder wrote:
> >
> >.... Pluto is reflecting sunlight, Planet X
> > does not but has its own diffuse glow....
> 
> It's so sad when cousins marry.
> 
> -- mike
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael Edelman   [email protected]

Yes, it is, Mike, are your parents first or second cousins?  A true sign
of intelligence is the ability to communicate, in spite of subtle and
irrelevant differences in word usage.  Its always amazing how the Really
Good Professors are also able to somehow explain Deep Things to
"ordinary" people.  These ordinary people cannot do the advanced math,
but they walk away with some kind of internalization of what the person
is explaining - they get the point.  Sadly, the reverse is not often
true where a scientist/engineer or other "educated" individual is able
to take someone seriously in spite of a difficulty with the lingo or a
poor command of math.

So let me try and put some "technical lingo" around the above.

The spectrum of light from pluto is the summation of the inherent glow
of the object and the convolution of the albedo spectrum with the
incident spectrum.  (Since you probably slept through Calculus, the
convolution is the point by point multiplication of two functions in the
frequency domain, and in this case frequency is "color".  In other words
if you shine a white light on a red object, it looks red and if you
shine a red light on a blue object it looks black or deep brown, the
color coming from the incident light as filtered by the illuminated
object.)

Now pluto will glow with what is essentially a black body spectrum, but
the surface of the planet is very cold because it does not either have
any significant self heating nor does it receive sufficient energy from
the sun to warm up.  As a first order approximation, the black body
spectrum can be ignored because it is so deep in the infrared that you
need very specialized and super cooled equipment to measure it.

The Sun is a black body radiator something around 6600K with spectral
lines from excited ions in the outer layers of the surface and
absorption lines from other layers.  It is black body but kind of
"noisy".  This radiation eventually reaches Pluto and so the planet
could be said to "shine" because it reflects the sunlight according to
its albedo function and according to the incident radiation.  Since we
already agreed that the black body radiation from Pluto is
insignificant, the primary radiation we see is (more or less) visible
light from the sun.

Now the amount of energy that reaches a specific point from the sun
follows an inverse square law.  Twice as far gives only 1/4 of the
light, and so on.

This object (Planet X) is being described as a "smoldering brown dwarf",
and before we start arguing about what that actually mean, lets agree
that the description is not relevant, only its spectrum is.  If it is
what it is claimed to be, this object will have a more complex spectrum
than one is used to.

First it will be a black body radiator of something around 300K plus or
minus.  While this is much "hotter" than Pluto, it is still something
that will require specialized equipment to measure.  So, again, we will
ignore its black body radiation.

In addition it has an albedo function as well and so will reflect
sunlight.  After all, it *has* to, unless it is a black hole.  However,
since it is also stated that it is approximately 9 times further than
Pluto right now, it will be 81 times dimmer.  (1/9^2)  Because the
reflected light is so much dimmer, we will also ignore it too.

This leaves the other self radiation of the object, which is described
as some kind of chemical reaction.  Whether it really is or not, is not
relevant, only that it is radiating, it is not strictly black body, so
it probably has a very spiky spectrum related to the causal mechanism,
kind of like if you look at a "white" fluorescent lamp through a
spectrum analyzer.  (I made one from a used razor blade, a plastic
diffraction grating, a cardboard box, and duct tape as a college physics
lab once.)

So in other words, what you will be able to actually SEE is not the
black body radiation or the reflected light, but its self illumination
because it swamps out everything else - just like she said:

>Nancy Lieder wrote:
>> 
>>.... Pluto is reflecting sunlight, Planet X
>> does not but has its own diffuse glow....

only without all the blather about black bodies, convolution and
absorption lines.

By analogy, you are standing outside your house in the pitch dark, a few
feet from a street lamp.  A mile down the road is an oncoming car with
it's parking lights on.  What color is the car?  You will have to wait
until it gets much closer to the street lamp to be able to tell.

The bottom line is what the readers of this news group are being
challenged to do is the following:

1) Take a long exposure (hopefully black and white) CCD picture of the
   supplied coordinates with enough magnification to resolve details.
2) Contrast invert the picture (as a convenience to the viewer).
3) Post the image on the news group (not the *.gif, the image - a gif
   file will introduce compression artifacts).
4) Point to the supplied coordinates and say "see, Nancy, there is
   nothing there!"
5) Wait a month.
6) Repeat steps 1-4.
7) Subtract this image from last month's image and look for differences
   around the supplied target area.
8) Post the difference image.
9) repeat steps 1-8 for several months
10) gloat because there is nothing there but noise

-or- 

10) Notice that, sure enough, there is this fuzzy thing, and it is
    moving (more or less) in the direction and track being described.  It is
    not *exactly* at the coordinates Nancy provided, but it is Real Close. 
    And it is *moving*.
11) Suck wind because *you* don't have an explanation.

I mean, really, how hard could the above be for some of the more well
heeled amateurs out there (with the larger 'scopes, tracking mounts and
CCD cameras - especially if it is cooled with a Peltier)?  It might
actually be fun, with the additional carrot at the end of the stick that
you get to be really superior, insulting and obnoxious at the end, and
you will have DATA to prove it.  Yep!  DATA, the difference between a
student and a professor...

So, Mike, what do you say?  Can you convince your cousin - er - wife to
let you outside long enough to take this picture?


BAAAAAHH