The Unplanetization of Pluto

The vote is in, and I demand a recount:

Capping years of intense debate, astronomers resolved today to demote Pluto in a wholesale redefinition of planethood that is being billed as a victory of scientific reasoning over historic and cultural influences. But already the decision is being hotly debated.

Officially, Pluto is no longer a planet.

I fart in their general direction.

Here's my take on it: The IAU's resolution, voted on by a stark minority of professional astronomers, defines a planet as "a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around a star or stellar remnants; (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape; (c) is not massive enough to initiate thermonuclear fusion of deuterium in its core; and, (d) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." Pluto apparently meets the first three criteria, but not the fourth.

A faction of scientists have had a hard-on for Pluto since the day Clyde discovered it, and it seems they've finally gotten their cookie. While there are plenty of pro astronomers that do not agree with Pluto's demotion, it is largely the public and amateur astronomers who are most perturbed at this turn of events - not because the decision is necessarily wrong, but because it is unneccessary. The IAU could have expanded the definition to include Pluto, or made an exception to it on Pluto's behalf - a grandfather clause, if you will, or a Roger Maris-style asterisk. I honestly believe the reason they chose not to is as much a case of the "pros" thumbing their collective noses at the lowly masses as it is a matter of science. The new definition is completely arbitrary; it could easily, and just as arbitrarily, have been worded to remove Uranus from the list by simply adding , "(e) has an axial tilt of 45 degress or less." Apparently, the only reason the IAU would need to do that is "Just Because".

I freely admit that my reaction is mostly emotional. There may be plenty of valid scientific reasons for demoting Pluto. I simply don't care. Pluto has been a member of the planet club since 1930. This is, as stated in the above quote, a matter of culture and history, which (it may surprise the propeller-heads to learn) are just as important to mankind as science; it should have been left well enough alone. Instead, Pluto is now in a newly created class of Solar-orbiting objects called a dwarf planet. I'm confused already - if it's not a planet, why call it a dwarf planet? Either it's a planet, or it's not. The distinction reeks of Clintonesque word parsing ("It's not sex, it's oral sex!"). You'd figure that these geniuses would be clever enough to come up with a more distinctive name for their newly invented class. How about "Pla-not"?

David Levy makes a great point:

"The Earth has much more in common with Pluto than with, say, Jupiter," Levy said. "You can walk on Pluto, there are three moons in its sky. Land on Jupiter, you'd just fall right in. Jupiter and the Earth have almost nothing in common, yet they're both called planets without any debate."

What he said. In this spirit I hereby propose that we further divide the remaining eight so-called "celestial bodies" that orbit our Sun into two groups: "Planets" (which would include Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) and "Big Balls of Gas" (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). When do I get to vote?

More on this:

• Pluto vote 'hijacked' in revolt (BBC)
  
• Goodbye, Pluto. Hello, "Dwarf Planets"! (S&T)
• Pluto Demoted: No Longer a Planet in Highly Controversial Definition (Space.com)
• IAU 2006 General Assembly: Result of the IAU Resolution votes
• Pluto (Wikipedia)
• Bush Kicks Pluto Out of Solar System (BlameBush!)
• The New York Times: Pluto Crisis Edition (The People's Cube)
• The Fight For Pluto Rages On (S&T)
• Astronomers Plot to Overturn Planet Definition (NewScientist)
  

Sirius Swap (or: Why I Support the Local Guys)

As mentioned previously, my Sirius mount exhibited a significant amount of play in the RA axis, enough to cause objects centered in my LVW13 eyepiece to shift 2/3 of the way to the edge whenever I touched the focuser. I reported this problem to Orion who agreed that this was not normal. They said, "Return it to us for repair, or bring it back to High Point Scientific for exchange." Hmm. Tough choice.

I forwarded Orion's email to Dave at HPS; less than an hour later, he emailed me back to say a new mount was on the way, and that he would call me when it arrived so we could do the swap. It came in about 2.5 weeks later. In the meantime, I was able to use the original mount for two consecutive weekends of decent weather - nights that I would have lost, or at least would have been relegated to the TV85 + Porta, if I had to return the mount to Orion. Instead, I got to enjoy some nice observing time with the Antares 5" while waiting for the replacement mount. This vindicates my decision to buy locally, even though I probably could have had it faster and cheaper (no sales tax) by ordering directly from Orion. The moral of the story, boys and girls, is: Whenever possible, support the home team!

As for the new mount, not a hint of the play that troubled the first mount. Also the movement in both RA and Dec feels a lot less constricted by the infamous "Synta glue" lubrication. Since the weather has reverted to the New Jersey standard (clear on worknights, clouds on weekends) I set the mount up in the living room for a shakedown with Astroplanner, and found everything to be working OK. The polar scope is again not aligned with the hole when the Dec axis is set to 90 deg. This time I'm just going to leave it alone.

While at High Point, I ordered another 11 lb. counterweight which will be drop-shipped from Orion. This should improve the balance of the 5" scope, and give me some headroom for adding things like cameras, large eyepieces, and piggybacked scopes, not to mention the C8 I plan to acquire soon.

Of Globulars and HST

I'm not the only one looking at globular clusters of late. Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have imaged the dimmest red and white dwarfs in NGC-6397, a globular cluster in the souther constellation of Ara. The press release:

17-Aug-2006: The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered what astronomers are reporting as the dimmest stars ever seen in any globular star cluster.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered what astronomers are reporting as the dimmest stars ever seen in any globular star cluster. Globular clusters are spherical concentrations of hundreds-of-thousands of stars.

These clusters formed early in the 13.7-billion-year-old universe. The cluster NGC 6397 is one of the closest globular star clusters to Earth. Seeing the whole range of stars in this area will yield insights into the age, origin, and evolution of the cluster.

Although astronomers have conducted similar observations since Hubble was launched, a team led by Harvey Richer of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, is reporting that they have at last unequivocally reached the faintest stars. Richer's team announced their findings today at the 2006 International Astronomical Union General Assembly in Prague, Czech Republic, and in the August 18 edition of Science.

"We have run out of hydrogen-burning stars in this cluster. There are no fainter such stars waiting to be discovered. We have discovered the lowest-mass stars capable of supporting stable nuclear reactions in this cluster. Any less massive ones faded early in the cluster's history and by now are too faint to be observed," said Richer.

Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys completed a census of two distinct stellar populations in NGC 6397. Hubble surveyed the faintest red dwarf stars which fuse hydrogen in their cores like our sun, and the dimmest white dwarfs, which are the burned-out relics of normal stars.

The light from these faint stars is as dim as the light produced by a birthday candle on the Moon seen from Earth. NGC 6397 is 8,500 light-years away from Earth. Analyzing the burned-out remnants of stars that died long ago, Hubble showed that the dimmest white dwarfs have such low temperatures that they are undergoing a chemical change in their atmospheres that makes them appear bluer rather than redder as they cool. This phenomenon had been predicted, but never observed.

These white dwarfs are the relics of stars, up to eight times as massive as the sun, which have exhausted the fuel capable of supporting nuclear reactions in their cores. Stars that were initially even more massive died as supernovae very early in the cluster's life, leaving behind neutron stars, black holes, or no debris at all.

Astronomers have used white dwarfs in globular clusters as a measure of the universe's age. The universe must be at least as old as the oldest stars. White dwarfs cool down at a predictable rate - the older the dwarf, the cooler it is, making it a perfect "clock" that has been ticking for almost as long as the universe has existed. Richer and his team are using the same age-dating technique to calculate the cluster's age. NGC 6397 is currently estimated to be nearly 12 billion years old.

A globular cluster's dimmest stars have eluded astronomers because their light is too feeble. Richer's team used Hubble's Advanced Camera to probe deep within the cluster for nearly five days to capture the faint stars. The camera's resolution is so sharp that it is capable of isolating cluster stars in this crowded cluster field, enabling cluster members to be distinguished from foreground and background stars. The cluster stars move together as the cluster orbits the Milky Way Galaxy, and Hubble was able to pinpoint which stars were moving with the cluster. The Hubble team used this technique together with archival Hubble images taken as much as a decade earlier to make sure they had a pure sample of cluster stars.

Burnham Remembered

Some amateur astronomers are working to create a memorial to the great Robert Burnham, Jr., author of the famed Burnham's Celestial Handbook. His tragic story was told by Tony Ortega in an article for the Phoenix New Times in 1997. I wish them luck in their endeavour.

My father had purchased the original 3-volume Dover hardcover set many years ago; they remain a valuable part of my library. Burnham's Celestial Handbook was instrumental in fueling my interest in astronomy at an early age - I read those books years before I ever looked through a telescope - and I am not surprised that so many people share my admiration of these books and the author.

Astroplanner

I don't think I've ever registered a piece of shareware. That's because most shareware I've come across generally sucks, and even that which does not suck usually gets installed, run once or twice, then quickly forgotten. Not so Astroplanner; this program is amazing.

I first tried Astroplanner about two years ago (v.1.3.x) but didn't really use it. It was fairly sluggish on the Mac, as I recall, and just didn't grab me at the time. Yesterday, I decided to revisit the app, and after downloading the latest version (v.1.5.2) I was blown away at the amount of work the author, Paul Rodman, has been putting into this program (as the release notes will attest). So I sent my $25 registration fee and downloaded a bunch of the object catalogs - NGC and IC catalogs, Herschell 400, Burnham Double Stars, Caldwell objects - and have been playing around with it.

Perhaps the reason the earlier version didn't impress me is that I just didn't have a use for it at the time - I was fairly new to the NexStar 8 GPS and perfectly content finding and selecting targets from its built-in lists, plus I was only chasing Messier objects and a few NGC's from the Night Sky Observer's Guide and S&T articles. After a couple of years of looking at the same, limited number of objects, I've graduated to more challenging targets and spending a lot more time planning my sessions around specific types of objects. For example, I might spend an entire night observing only open clusters, or globulars, or planetary nebulae, or whatever. Astroplanner makes it easy to generate a list based on numerous criteria (i.e., all Planetary Nebulae from the NGC Catalog located in Lyra, Cygnus, Vulpecula, Saggita, Delphinus and Aquilia, 10th magnitude or brighter, with declination greater than +10 deg). Click, click, done - I have a nice list of targets for the night, and with the telescope connected, another click puts the target in my eyepiece (well, some of the time...).

A nice feature is the ability to download images from the Digital Sky Survey (DSS), cache them to disk, and display them along with the other data. This can be very helpful if you're not sure if what you're looking at is actually the desired object - just check the image and compare!

Once your target list is complete, Astroplanner can print various forms, including a nifty Observation Form which places various data at top, DSS images below that, and an observation log section with sketching circles and blank fields for notes and details.

Control of the Sirius mount is very straightforward; perform the initial alignment process as usual, then just plug in the cable, set the mount to RS232C control, and it's done. Nothing fancy, just a convenient way to point your scope at an object with one click of the mouse, rather than having to scroll through menus and nested tables with the hand controller, looking for an object that might not even be in the list.

I'll add more notes once I get the chance to use Astroplanner in the field (or on the deck, as the case may be).

Observing: Chi Cygni

Sky & Telescope reports:

The red, Mira-type variable star Chi Cygni is having a very unusual maximum right now. It's one of the brightest such variables to begin with (typically peaking at about magnitude 5.2), but now it's about magnitude 3.8, according to many reports to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) in the last two weeks. Writes John Bortle: "This would make the current maximum the brightest in 148 years.

I haven't pointed a scope at this one yet but I've been observing it naked eye for the past week or so.

Observing: Planetaries & Globulars in Cyg, Del & Aql, and the Moon

Alignment worked well tonight, pointed toward Vega and Altair in the correct direction. Didn't do anything differently this time. Go figure. Tested on M57 (center of field), M27 (toward edge), and M29 (out of field in TV Zoom @ 24mm). Best I can hope for without accurate polar alignment, I guess.

For tonight's target list, I picked a bunch of planetary nebulae and globular clusters in Cygnus, Delphinus and Aquila with help from the S&T PSA and NSOG:

• NGC 6826: The Blinking Planetary, very bright. Damned thing actually blinks!
• NGC 6905: Revisited this planetary after seeing it last time out. It's still there...
• M56: GC, good view with LVW13
• M71: GC, also good with LVW13
• NGC 6760: GC, dim but visible
• NGC 6934: GC, brighter but small
• NGC 7006: GC, also dim

Several other objects on my list were not seen (NGCs 6842, 6894, 7008 and 7048); NGC 6891 was already in the tree by the time I attempted it.

By 10:30PM, moon glow washed out the sky. I set the Sirius for lunar tracking and waited for the big guy to rise from the trees in the east to try some DSLR imaging with the Digital Rebel and Celestron 40mm Plossl. After 11:30 I took a bunch of shots of the eastern limb around Mare Crisium; three came out OK (click any image to see larger version with craters labeled):



One big problem: All images grow out of focus radially from the center of the field, as if they were put through a Radial Blur filter in Photoshop. This is most evident in shots in which I placed the limb near the center of the field, thus offsetting the moon to one side:

I'm hoping that something in the imaging chain was not seated properly, perhaps the eyepiece in the Maxview DSLR adapter. Or maybe the combined weight of diagonal, Maxview, eyepiece and camera body was too much for the drawtube (which I probably did not have fully locked down) and caused it to shift out of line slightly. Whatever, I need to figure this out next time.

Antares 127mm Third Light

A clear, cloudless night, 66 deg at 10pm, relative humidity 48% early on but rising to above 80% by the time I packed it in, with the full moon rising just as it gets dark. In Glass-Half-Full mode, I embrace this opportunity to see how well the 5" achro performs on the brightest object in the night sky.

Short answer: Not too bad! Maybe my color blindness has finally found a practical use, as I saw very little purple fringing on the lunar limb. The scope delivered very sharp views with the TV 32mm and 20mm Plossls; the 20mm at 61x and 50 deg AFOV fit the entire lunar disc perfectly. I tried the LVWs but thought they were a little soft in contrast. I noticed that my lunar filter didn't want to screw into the barrel of the LVW13; need to check to make sure the threads are OK.

I performed a two-star alignment on Arcturus and Altair, but it still couldn't place anything in the FOV, even with the LVW42 - it's gotta be off in altitude, because it should be close enough to north in azimuth to give it an adequate rough polar alignment. Damn trees!

Still trying to figure out the logic by which the Sirius chooses alignment stars - when I chose Altair first, Arcturus didn't even come up as an option for second alignment star; but when I chose Arcturus first, Altair did. How odd...

I didn't stay out long since it's a work night, and the full moon gets old fast. Saw a few moonbats (real ones, not the left-wing Bush-hating variety). After trying different eyepieces for an hour or so I packed it in.

SIde note: I exchanged a couple of emails with Orion tech support about the excessive play in the mount's RA axis; they seem to think it is a defective and suggested I either send it in for repair or exchange through the dealer, so I emailed Dave at High Point who agreed to swap it out with another mount head. Orion is sending one out, it should be here in about a week. Great service from both Orion and High Point!

Antares 127mm Second Light

Just a quick session to check a few things that were nagging me since last night's session...

All of the initial settings are OK, the Sirius definitely points west when Vega is east of meridian. Does UTC offset need to be -4 hours, even when daylight savings time is selected? Is one hour difference enough to explain that large an error?

Did 2-star alignment on Vega and Altair, and was able to find M13 and M92 this time with the LVW42. After centering and switching eyepieces, they both looked nice with their outer stars resolving and their cores bright. I want to compare the views between the Antares and TV85 at similar magnification next time out just to see what the extra 1.5" or so buys.

After the Hercules globs, I entered M27 and the Sirius but in dam near in the center of the field. But after a while (20 min maybe?) it drifted out of the field. Selected it again, and it went right back to the middle of the field! OK... so if the mount knows where the object is, why can't it keep it centered while tracking?

Polar scope definitely does not illuminate, and straight-thru finder scope is most definitely the must useless piece of shit I've ever had the privilege of owning.

Clouds rolled in quickly a little before 10pm.

Antares 127mm First Light

Dang, she's pretty! With the tripod legs fully extended and the scope pointing north she stands a few inches taller than me, so I'm guessing 6'4" or so. For tonight I've got a short list of targets in and around the Summer Triangle - some old favorites, some I've never looked at before - compiled from Sue French's column in the September S&T plus a few I picked out of the S&T Pocket Atlas: Messiers 13, 15, 27, 29, 39, 56, 57, 71, 92, and NGCs 6793, 6800, 6802, 6819, 6882/85, 6883, 6905 and 7006.

Nice weather, finally - temp was 77 deg when I set up around 9pm, but dropped to 69 deg by 11 pm. Forgot to check relative humidity, but it was less sticky at 11 than at 9. Unfortunately it is Regatta Weekend at Lake Dipshit, so the air was thick with gunpowder smoke from the fireworks, and the mandatory "Turn Your Fucking Lights On" law is in effect. Waxing gibbous Moon turned the sky into a pale gray, not the best conditions for seeking DSO's.

Not being able to see Polaris is a major setback, and rough alignment is touchy. I tried 3-star alignment first (Vega, Altair and Arcturus) but the go-to was off most of the time. Realigned using 2-star method (Vega and Altair) and it was an improvement, at least around those two stars in the triangle; go-to placed M13 and M92 in Hercules so out of field I gave up trying to find them.

After the first alignment, my official first light target was Albireo; with low power (LVW42 at 29x) showed the colors of the yellow and blue pair beautifully! Then I went through my target list. Mostly used the LVW13 (94x) as conditions did not favor the LVW8 (152.5x). Of the globulars, M15 was the only one that even remotely showed any resolution into stars; M56, M71 and NGC 7006 were just fuzz, looking more like galactic cores than globs. Open clusters looked very nice, especially M29, M39 and the pair of NGC 6882 & NGC 6885. I punched in planetary nebula NGC 6905 for the hell of it and was suprised that it was visible under these bright sky conditions - pretty faint, but I clearly could see it as a faint disc using averted vision; it tended to disappear when looking directly at it.

So this session was not great as far as observing goes, but it was a good first-light shakedown of both mount and scope to give me an idea what they can do under fairly miserable observing conditions. Good things I noticed:

• Optics seem very good; quick star test showed well centered concentric circles inside focus, though poor seeing turned the disc to mush outside of focus. Definitely not an apo, the center turned bright violet-blue on brighter stars.
  
• Mount is fairly simple to set up and disassemble.
  
• Slewing and tracking are both quiet.
• The edge of field astigmatism I noticed when using the wider LVWs (42, 22 and 17 mm) with the TV85 seem to be completely alleviated with the longer focal length Antares.

Not-so-good things I noticed:

• Polar alignment scope does not illuminate
• Keypad buttons are virtually unreadable in twilight
• Play in mount is as bad as the mirror shift in my N8GPS!
• Focuser is stiffer than morning wood.
• Finder scope is utterly useless. Need 45 deg finder with illuminated reticle.
  
• Can't update alignment like I could with Nexstar.
• When choosing Vega as alignment star, scope slewed in opposite direction (west of meridian as opposed to east). Same thing with Altair. WTF??? Clock, date, UTC offset, lat/lon all correct. Could I possibly be that far off from Polaris? Need to check into this.

Antares 127mm Arrives

Woohoo! A quick visual check, everything seems OK. Brad (the seller) did a great job packing it up for the trip from Washington. I mounted it on the Sirius to get an idea how easy setup is going to be in six or eight months when the weather becomes conducive to astronomical observation.

She's a big 'un for sure, not sure the total weight with diagonal, eyepiece, rings, dovetail, and finder scope mounted - probably up over 22 lbs, so it should be well under the published 30 lb. limit of the mount. Initial impressions:

• It barely balances in RA with the one counterweight all the way at the end of the shaft. The 2" TV diagonal is very tight in the visual back but I think it's OK.
  
  
• The rack & pinion focuser has a lot of really goopy grease on it, might want to look into cleaning it up a bit, but it appers to be smooth.
  
  
• There is a small amount of play in the declination axis - not sure if that is normal, or if it will affect use.
  
  
• I'm going to have to extend the tripod legs quite a bit if I want to observe near zenith without kneeling on the ground; maybe a pier extension will be better, I really like to keep the legs as short as possible.

Linda is going to freak when she sees this thing in the living room...