Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[PaulW]

Great, hopefully that'll can the spam.

Only slightly OT: are there any special preparations up on high for possible hurricanes? Or does the discovering boldly go on regardless?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Proxima Centauri ... Are any of the local observatories involed in studying this one?

Proxima Centauri can be seen from the southern hemisphere, so most of the discoveries on the newly found exoplanet have come out of Chile.

- Be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. - Work slowly. - Refer all matters to committees for "further study and consideration. - Hold conferences. - Make travel as inconvenient as possible. - Haggle over precise wordings of communications. - Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and avoid haste. (Excerpts from the WWII OSS Simple Sabotage Manual)

[randomq]

Any work on that star & exoplanet the Russians detected radio noise from?

[Eric1600]

Are you referring to the singal detected from a sun-like star? It doesn't look like much to people assisting with SETI searches.

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_th...93#1813506

quote:

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I'm sure that many of you have seen the news reports of a "SETI signal" detected from the star HD 164595

I was one of the many people who received the the email with the subject "Candidate SETI SIGNAL DETECTED by Russians from star HD 164595 by virtue of RATAN-600 radio telescope." Since the email did come from known SETI researchers, I looked over the presentation. I was unimpressed. In one out of 39 scans that passed over star showed a signal at about 4.5 times the mean noise power with a profile somewhat like the beam profile. Of course SETI@home has seen millions of potential signals with similar characteristics, but it takes more than that to make a good candidate. Multiple detections are a minimum criterion.

Because the receivers used were making broad band measurements, there's really nothing about this "signal" that would distinguish it from a natural radio transient (stellar flare, active galactic nucleus, microlensing of a background source, etc.) There's also nothing that could distinguish it from a satellite passing through the telescope field of view. All in all, it's relatively uninteresting from a SETI standpoint.

But, of course, it's been announced to the media. Reporters won't have the background to know it's not interesting. Because the media has it, and since this business runs on media, everyone will look at it. ATA is looking at it. I assume Breakthrough will look at it. Someone will look at it with Arecibo, and we'll be along for the ride. And I'll check the SETI@home database around that position. And we'll all find nothing. It's not our first time at this rodeo, so we know how it works.

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[TomK]

Mike - as HOTPE mentioned, Proxima Centauri is in the south, and unfortunately not visible to the MK observatories, so work on that system is being done by observatories in the southern hemisphere.

Paul - most if not all observatories will close Wednesday night so that staff can prepare for the storm. Some might even close tonight and only skeleton crews will go up on Wednesday for any last minute work. UKIRT will likely close tonight if humidity stays high over the next few hours (it's currently ~90% which is higher than our opening limits) and is already officially closed tomorrow night.

[beepbeep]

Glad I was able to read and understand this thread (didn't know what's been wrong with me lately, turned out to be hypothyroid.) lots of great info and discussion here! Mixed with, of course, a bit of PW drama Aloha to all of you.

Pam in CA

[VancouverIslander]

Tom: thanks for the confirmation, although I should have remembered the -60 declination, having just looked it up a couple of days ago. I'm not surprised that there is little activity today after looking at the webcams.

Me ka ha`aha`a,
Mike

[TomK]

Mike - Proxima Centauri does rise above the horizon for a short time during the night from Hawaii although isn't visible to the naked eye. However, it doesn't get above 10 degrees above the horizon and observatories tend not to observe anything below about 30 degrees as it makes calibrations virtually impossible. 10 degrees might be physically impossible for most (it would be for UKIRT for instance).

[oink]

Tom, that is a very cool pic you linked to by Sean Goebel. Are you still doing any photography?

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.

[TomK]

Hi oink. Unfortunately, lack of time and opportunity means I haven't been doing as much photography as I'd like, especially for shots from Mauna Kea. I don't get up there as much as I used to.

Incidentally, for anyone interested, there is a talk at the 'Imiloa on Friday, September 16th at 7pm to be given by Dr Richard Green entitled:

"UKIRT: Recent Discoveries and Future Promise."

http://blog.imiloahawaii.org/general-inf...telescope/