That makes it much clearer as to how and why the 8 planets orbital planes are tipped up from the Sun’s polar axis by a few degrees. It is going to be a hell of a job to find that thing. I assume it is a captured planet, or, it was flung out of its original inner orbit somehow.
We missed Moon Day on 21 July! The 55th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin making a giant leap for mankind!
That is if Scarlett Johansson ( sighs ) didn't fake it in her new film... 🙄
WAYY COOL video about Planet 9 here, with Konstantin Batygin who is Mike Brown's partner in all things Planet 9, which answers all the questions:
Apparently the new Vera Rubin Telescope is just made to find it. I checked, and they won't be calling it "Minerva", which is a pity IMO. They've already used it on a puny asteroid... David Bowie it is. 🤣
Naturally I was busy identifying stars in the video, here seen from Chile, and what is weird is they seem to drift to the right:
Pretty easy, that one, eh @Galu?
That is if Scarlett Johansson ( sighs ) didn't fake it in her new film... 🙄
WAYY COOL video about Planet 9 here, with Konstantin Batygin who is Mike Brown's partner in all things Planet 9, which answers all the questions:
Apparently the new Vera Rubin Telescope is just made to find it. I checked, and they won't be calling it "Minerva", which is a pity IMO. They've already used it on a puny asteroid... David Bowie it is. 🤣
Naturally I was busy identifying stars in the video, here seen from Chile, and what is weird is they seem to drift to the right:
Pretty easy, that one, eh @Galu?
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It simply serves to confirm that the Earth ain't flat!
Look at the videos in this link: https://amazingsky.net/2016/08/25/the-moving-stars-of-the-northern-hemisphere/
Are you referring to the fact that the night sky in Chile is reversed compared to what we see in the UK?
Perhaps best described by this astronomer: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/observing-chiles-finest/
It was well done, wasn't it? I felt quite, er, spacy after watching it. 🙂
I don't know how to repost an image, so won't try. But I noticed Sirius and the Orion Nebula and the belt straightaway, then the Hyades (Around Red Aldebaran) and Pleiades in Taurus in a line.
But all upside down, of course.
Jupiter and Mars are conjunct on August 14 in Taurus, viewable in the wee small hours. Uranus will be near the Pleides too.
So a potentially fine snap possible.
I have been researching Planetary Data and Kepler's Laws and the angular momentum of Planet 9, but will save that for another blockbuster post... 😀
I don't know how to repost an image, so won't try. But I noticed Sirius and the Orion Nebula and the belt straightaway, then the Hyades (Around Red Aldebaran) and Pleiades in Taurus in a line.
But all upside down, of course.
Jupiter and Mars are conjunct on August 14 in Taurus, viewable in the wee small hours. Uranus will be near the Pleides too.
So a potentially fine snap possible.
I have been researching Planetary Data and Kepler's Laws and the angular momentum of Planet 9, but will save that for another blockbuster post... 😀
As an amateur Planetary Scientist, like yourselves, I often dream of winning the Royal Astronomical Society's hefty and valuable 2.6 oz. Gold Medal:
Previous winners include Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Jan Oort and Vera Rubin to name a few.
This is coming ever closer with my recent discoveries! Perhaps I might get a new Space Telescope named after me too: The s7ST! 😀
I have been beavering away with Planetary Data for Planet 9 and applying Kepler's Laws:
https://www.zipcon.net/~swhite/docs/astronomy/Angular_Momentum.html
The results are as follows:
I decided to run with Planet 9 orbiting in 10,000 years. The result is that Planet 9 carries more angular momentum than both Uranus and Neptune! This surprised me.
It is well known that Jupiter carries 60% of the angular momentum in the Solar System, The Sun's rotation contributing around a mere 4%.
Also of interest is that the Earth and Venus exhibit a 8:13 orbital resonance.
viz: 0.615198 x 13 = 7.99757413 Earth Years.
This means that Venus repeats a 5 fold cycle in the sky every 8 years to within less than a day. I did know this, but not the exact explanation.
I leave it to you to discover other resonances. Now I really need to lie down and calm myself. 😎
Previous winners include Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Jan Oort and Vera Rubin to name a few.
This is coming ever closer with my recent discoveries! Perhaps I might get a new Space Telescope named after me too: The s7ST! 😀
I have been beavering away with Planetary Data for Planet 9 and applying Kepler's Laws:
https://www.zipcon.net/~swhite/docs/astronomy/Angular_Momentum.html
The results are as follows:
I decided to run with Planet 9 orbiting in 10,000 years. The result is that Planet 9 carries more angular momentum than both Uranus and Neptune! This surprised me.
It is well known that Jupiter carries 60% of the angular momentum in the Solar System, The Sun's rotation contributing around a mere 4%.
Also of interest is that the Earth and Venus exhibit a 8:13 orbital resonance.
viz: 0.615198 x 13 = 7.99757413 Earth Years.
This means that Venus repeats a 5 fold cycle in the sky every 8 years to within less than a day. I did know this, but not the exact explanation.
I leave it to you to discover other resonances. Now I really need to lie down and calm myself. 😎
I reckon that Steve's got a brass neck expecting a gold medal! 😀
But give him a brass nose and he could be a modern day Tycho Brahe.
Tycho Brahe
But give him a brass nose and he could be a modern day Tycho Brahe.
Tycho Brahe
The orbital angular momentum of the Eight Planets, the Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, Planet Nine and the Solar Companion, when added to the spin angular momentum of the Sun, gives the total angular momentum of the Solar System as 3.3212 x 10^45 kg m^2 s^-1.
This is a very important physical quantity in regard to the formation and evolution of the Solar System. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016HPAA....4...33C/abstract
The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that the angular momenta of Planet Nine and the "Solar Companion" are included in the summation.
Could that solar companion be our Nemesis? 😱
"Nemesis" is a dwarf star postulated to be orbiting the Sun at a distance of 1.5 light years and thought to be responsible for 12 cyclical extinction events on Earth, including the one that killed the dinosaurs.
The hypothesis is that Nemesis could provide a mechanism for periodic disturbances of comets in the Oort cloud, which would then fall inwards causing the mass extinctions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(hypothetical_star)
In Isaac Asimov's 1989 novel, Nemesis, the red dwarf star is not this "Solar Companion", but is simply passing through the Solar System.
This is a very important physical quantity in regard to the formation and evolution of the Solar System. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016HPAA....4...33C/abstract
The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that the angular momenta of Planet Nine and the "Solar Companion" are included in the summation.
Could that solar companion be our Nemesis? 😱
"Nemesis" is a dwarf star postulated to be orbiting the Sun at a distance of 1.5 light years and thought to be responsible for 12 cyclical extinction events on Earth, including the one that killed the dinosaurs.
The hypothesis is that Nemesis could provide a mechanism for periodic disturbances of comets in the Oort cloud, which would then fall inwards causing the mass extinctions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(hypothetical_star)
In Isaac Asimov's 1989 novel, Nemesis, the red dwarf star is not this "Solar Companion", but is simply passing through the Solar System.
"Reach For The Moon" in the 16.35 at Worcester was a nice little 6-1 earner for the system today.
Alas I missed a wager on 2-y-o "Celestial Orbit" in the 15.15 at Sandown which stormed in at 9-1, but I can live with it. I'll have it next time. 🙂
@Galu
I have a problem with that. It's about a hundred times bigger than my estimate of 3 x 10^43 based on known planets! I couldn't get the link to work to see what they did.
I think this "Nemesis" star business is rot. I am sure infra-red telescopes would have picked it up by now.
It seems that stars as big as our own Sun pass close to us every 2 million years or so. Say sometimes within half a light year or 30,000 AU.
Little double Scholz's star came within 0.8 LY only 80,000 years ago. It's now 22 LY away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars#Distant_future_and_past_encounters
But 30,000 AU is way further than even the Trans Neptunians and Dwarf Planets. Theories say it might cause a storm of comets...
Highly eccentric Dwarf planet Sedna (1000 km diameter) orbits between 76 and 900 AU in 11,000 years, and was picked up at Mag. 20 at 100 AU, which makes me wonder why Planet 9 is so elusive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedna_(dwarf_planet)
Alas I missed a wager on 2-y-o "Celestial Orbit" in the 15.15 at Sandown which stormed in at 9-1, but I can live with it. I'll have it next time. 🙂
@Galu
I have a problem with that. It's about a hundred times bigger than my estimate of 3 x 10^43 based on known planets! I couldn't get the link to work to see what they did.
I think this "Nemesis" star business is rot. I am sure infra-red telescopes would have picked it up by now.
It seems that stars as big as our own Sun pass close to us every 2 million years or so. Say sometimes within half a light year or 30,000 AU.
Little double Scholz's star came within 0.8 LY only 80,000 years ago. It's now 22 LY away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars#Distant_future_and_past_encounters
But 30,000 AU is way further than even the Trans Neptunians and Dwarf Planets. Theories say it might cause a storm of comets...
Highly eccentric Dwarf planet Sedna (1000 km diameter) orbits between 76 and 900 AU in 11,000 years, and was picked up at Mag. 20 at 100 AU, which makes me wonder why Planet 9 is so elusive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedna_(dwarf_planet)
The link works for me, but it doesn't reveal how the calculations were performed: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016HPAA....4...33C/abstract
For that we would have to go to the source: Astronomy and Astrophysics (Hans Publishers), vol. 4, no. 2, p. 33-40, 2016
I've had no luck pinning that down, but this may be the journal concerned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomy_&_Astrophysics
Here's another extract from the link for your examination: "Using Eggleton's code, we calculate the rotational inertia of the Sun. Furthermore, we obtain that the spin angular momentum of the Sun is 1.8838 x 10^41 kg m^2 s^-1."
P.S. In the 1970s, Peter Eggleton devised the first Stellar Evolution Code which has since been updated with the latest physics and is used worldwide.
Back in 2016, a team of astronomers from Observatoire de Paris narrowed down Planet Nine's likely position (shown in green in the following diagram) in its elongated elliptical orbit around the Sun, thus suggesting a possibly fruitful direction in which to make observations.
https://www.observatoiredeparis.psl.eu/a-la-recherche-de-la-neuvieme.html?lang=en
I have found a similar source now, but it's heavy reading!
Here's how the total angular momentum of the Solar System was calculated (see section 3):
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2019/10/aa34196-18/aa34196-18.html
EDIT: I haven't looked here yet: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234513815_Angular_Momentum_of_the_Solar_System
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Presuming such things as Nemesis are out there, I find it almost surprising that they're not found. There are a a lot of telescopes, both Earthbound and in space looking for things. I recall Planetary Resources from 10 or 15 years ago was going to put 100 small telescopes in space specifically to look for smaller asteroids, especially ones that come near Earth, with the eventual goal of capturing an asteroid to mine for its metals and such. Any object in the sky that moves relative to the background or that even significantly changes brightness can be found automatically.
I read that Nemesis is most likely a red dwarf star of magnitude between 7 and 12 which, if it exists, will be visible with binoculars or a small telescope.
However, there's a 'hefollalot' of sky to observe!
The Vera C. Rubin observatory will house a wide field telescope that will photograph the entire available sky every few nights.
The images will be recorded on the largest digital camera ever constructed (3.2 gigapixel). If it exists, the "Solar Companion" will not elude Rubin's gaze!
If Nemesis was a red dwarf magnitude 7-12 I am pretty sure it would have been found already.
That's really quite bright. About what wretched underperforming putative Nova T CrB is right now.
Let's see now. Sharpens pencil, finds scrap of paper.... Pluto when 50 AU away is mag 16.3. Albedo about 50%, radius about 1,000 km:
Suppose we are looking for a planet of similar albedo and 5 Earth masses at 500 AU. Planet 9.
It would be 100x fainter due to distance, another 100x fainter due to weaker sunlight. That's 10 magnitudes down.
Maybe 100x brighter because it is bigger than Pluto, which brightens it by 5 magniudes. Being around 10,000 km radius if it is rocky, more if it is a more voluminous gas giant, less if it is a dark body like the Moon which is about 5% Albedo AFAIK.
So, ballpark, around Mag 21.3. Bit fainter than little mag 20 1000 km Sedna which is currently 100 AU away
This is the wildest of guesses really, and maybe optimistic, but apparently a terrestrial 8m telescope is good for Mag 27, and Hubble for 32, JWST 34 in infrared.
Clearly the new terrestrial 8.4m Vera Rubin Telescope stands a decent chance of finding it with the latest in computer processing. Apparently it takes 3 good observations to compute the orbital parameters, which is the sort of thing Gauss did for a living.
I think it should be called the Snark if it turns up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunting_of_the_Snark
🤣
That's really quite bright. About what wretched underperforming putative Nova T CrB is right now.
Let's see now. Sharpens pencil, finds scrap of paper.... Pluto when 50 AU away is mag 16.3. Albedo about 50%, radius about 1,000 km:
Suppose we are looking for a planet of similar albedo and 5 Earth masses at 500 AU. Planet 9.
It would be 100x fainter due to distance, another 100x fainter due to weaker sunlight. That's 10 magnitudes down.
Maybe 100x brighter because it is bigger than Pluto, which brightens it by 5 magniudes. Being around 10,000 km radius if it is rocky, more if it is a more voluminous gas giant, less if it is a dark body like the Moon which is about 5% Albedo AFAIK.
So, ballpark, around Mag 21.3. Bit fainter than little mag 20 1000 km Sedna which is currently 100 AU away
This is the wildest of guesses really, and maybe optimistic, but apparently a terrestrial 8m telescope is good for Mag 27, and Hubble for 32, JWST 34 in infrared.
Clearly the new terrestrial 8.4m Vera Rubin Telescope stands a decent chance of finding it with the latest in computer processing. Apparently it takes 3 good observations to compute the orbital parameters, which is the sort of thing Gauss did for a living.
I think it should be called the Snark if it turns up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunting_of_the_Snark
🤣
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The problem with P9 is because its orbit is very elliptical and not in orbital resonance with anything, it’s very hard to locate. Batygin hints at this in the YouTube video Steve posted. IIRC he used the term ‘chaotic’ to describe P9’s influence on bodies in the Kuiper Belt.
I have moved on from searching for putative Planet 9. And so should you.
My current reading list including Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli about Werner Heisenberg, about whom as the graffiti artists often write on toilet walls in the Physics Department: "Heisenberg Probably Rules OK".:
I was explaining Quantum Mechanics, and why we should care, to my arty cronies at the watering hole yesterday.
Frankly they were baffled. TBH, I am not surprised considering the childish explanations usually given by most Physics people:
The above simplistic Schrodinger wave approach does Quantum Physics no service at all, IMO. To omit the i in front of h(bar) and the factor of 2 is just plain ignorant.
I really prefer Heisenberg's sounder matrix development.
I was also explaining that a good physicist often has a name of 4 letters beginning with B. They questioned my tendency to genralise.
But for instance, here Wolfgang Pauli and Neils Bohr try to settle the argument over who is the better Physicist by establishing who the spin of Bohr's top points to when measured:
Pauli, not short on ego, famously said to Heisenberg that his matrix maths problem was impossible to solve for any mathematician..... EXCEPT Pauli! 😀
Back to my thesis about 4 letters and a B. Not many people know that famous Quantum Mechanics man and Nobel prizewinner, Max Born had a grandaughter who was no less than the lovely Olivia Newton-John here in "Grease":
This seemed to make the point to my cronies. Didn't she sing 'Let's get Physical?", they asked. Exactly! 🤣
My current reading list including Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli about Werner Heisenberg, about whom as the graffiti artists often write on toilet walls in the Physics Department: "Heisenberg Probably Rules OK".:
I was explaining Quantum Mechanics, and why we should care, to my arty cronies at the watering hole yesterday.
Frankly they were baffled. TBH, I am not surprised considering the childish explanations usually given by most Physics people:
The above simplistic Schrodinger wave approach does Quantum Physics no service at all, IMO. To omit the i in front of h(bar) and the factor of 2 is just plain ignorant.
I really prefer Heisenberg's sounder matrix development.
I was also explaining that a good physicist often has a name of 4 letters beginning with B. They questioned my tendency to genralise.
But for instance, here Wolfgang Pauli and Neils Bohr try to settle the argument over who is the better Physicist by establishing who the spin of Bohr's top points to when measured:
Pauli, not short on ego, famously said to Heisenberg that his matrix maths problem was impossible to solve for any mathematician..... EXCEPT Pauli! 😀
Back to my thesis about 4 letters and a B. Not many people know that famous Quantum Mechanics man and Nobel prizewinner, Max Born had a grandaughter who was no less than the lovely Olivia Newton-John here in "Grease":
This seemed to make the point to my cronies. Didn't she sing 'Let's get Physical?", they asked. Exactly! 🤣