Discoveries using the telescopes on Mauna Kea

[kalakoa]

Hey, remember that time...

Sure. Whatever you say.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

This is about discoveries made one mountain over on Mauna Loa, at the HI-SEAS Mars Habitat Mission 5 now under way. Crew members made a behind the scenes video for us to see their work environment in and around the latest eight month simulation of life on Mars (Mauna Loa).

Beautiful footage of Mauna Loa, and the jam packed interior of the dome. There's a lot of work conducted daily on Hawaii Island we don't know about. The video was just posted yesterday, April 28th:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT3ONvii8oM

On the fifth day - the scientists who studied the rivers - were forbidden to speak - or to study the rivers. -Jane Hirshfield's poem on creation

[Guest]

HOTPE, Mahalo for sharing that wonderful video. One of my best friends helped produce that video, he spent three action packed weeks with the film crew. He said the trip or experience atop Mauna Kea in one of the observatories up there impressed him the most.

[MarkD]

This refers to comments made here 2 days ago

OK, TMT critics--and I support your right to dissent--get on the proper thread for that.

Moderator/Adminstrator, this would seem to be a situation that could warrant account suspension for chronic offenders.

How about a clarification for EVERYONE TO READ on what the policy is, please.

POST CLARIFICATION BOTH HERE AND AS A NEW TOPIC, PLEASE

[TomK]

"Does the proposed Planet 9 actually exist?"

Some of you may be aware that recently there has been a search for a new 9th planet using the Subaru telescope on MK. Computer models suggested that the orbits of very distant trans-Neptunian objects point to a very large planet orbiting far beyond Neptune.

However, a recent discovery by the CFHT on MK throws this into some doubt. The researchers discovered a new trans-Neptunian object, about half the size of the Big Island, which has been given the romantic name of SY99.

SY99 is extremely distant and its orbit would be drastically affected by Planet 9 if it exists, throwing it out of the solar system entirely or into an orbit that would be hard to detect. If this is the case, this is a very lucky observation. However, if SY99 is just an example of many other objects like this, but just haven't been observed yet as they are so faint, then Planet 9 probably doesn't exist.

The search goes on for more objects like SY99 and Planet 9.

https://phys.org/news/2017-04-discovery-...ptune.html

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

if SY99 is just an example of many other objects like this... then Planet 9 probably doesn't exist.

Curiouser & curiouser.
The area beyond Neptune may be the most complex part of our solar system. Are the unusual orbital paths of bodies out there due to the weaker gravitational pull of the sun at that distance? Since the sun may not lock down their orbits in the same way as it can with the closer inner planets?

On the fifth day - the scientists who studied the rivers - were forbidden to speak - or to study the rivers. -Jane Hirshfield's poem on creation

[TomK]

Really good question!

Obviously, the farther away something is from the sun, the smaller the effects of the sun's gravity. The Oort cloud, a suggested cloud of ice-like bodies orbiting the sun, still feel the effect of the sun, but are very prone to gravitational influences from elsewhere, including stars that come nearby and just the general gravitational effects you get from the Galaxy. Because these effects only show up over millions of years, it's hard to tell if you see something approach the sun from the Oort cloud (e.g., comets) is because they were in that orbit to start with or were pushed into it from some other event - even a collision with another Oort cloud object. Only once the object's orbit is well known, which can take several weeks to months measuring it, can you tell if it's a new object or something that's been around before.

That's why this discovery is interesting. Objects like SY99 could be in a closer orbit around the sun than the Oort cloud because the general gravitational influence of the Galaxy is causing them to do this, but all the others just haven't been detected yet. On the other hand, this object could have been pulled from the Oort cloud by Planet 9, but in that case, this would be the only time we would detect it before it got sent off elsewhere, which is why I said it would be a lucky observation.

Too early to say either way right now. Interestingly, before all this, Pluto was "Planet 9" until it got demoted (correctly, in my opinion), but it was a lucky discovery. It just happened to be in the right place when Tombaugh was searching for another planet that would explain the orbit of Uranus. It was only a few decades later when we had the technology to realize Pluto was too small to explain Uranus' orbit. No blame on Tombaugh for that!

[TomK]

"Shouting makes no difference"

A group consisting of astronomers and Puna residents have made an astounding discovery. The results of the study confirm that shouting at the owner of an online forum has absolutely no influence on anything, including the forum, Puna, the Earth, solar system or anything else.

The object they observed, given the name MarkD, was observed to shout and nothing happened. The group released the original data just tonight:

"Moderator/Adminstrator, this would seem to be a situation that could warrant account suspension for chronic offenders.

How about a clarification for EVERYONE TO READ on what the policy is, please.

POST CLARIFICATION BOTH HERE AND AS A NEW TOPIC, PLEASE"

Others think this is simply the return of an object, previously named Dory I, that visited our system before as the behavior of the object is the same as seen previously. Dory II, a very similar object, is currently quiescent and the group awaits another upturn in activity in order to detect it.

[PaulW]

MarkD, please start a separate thread with your advice to the Moderator on what he's been doing wrong for the past 11 years.
I'm sure he'll be thrilled.

[PaulW]

It's a bit disappointing that some astronomers seemed so sure about Planet 9, like it was a done deal.
I suppose everyone's human. Luckily, Science sorts the wheat from the chaff.