But, the matter is essentially a dead issue,
important primarily to the individuals involved.
I am much more interested in 2003EL61 itself!
Its shape, for example. Now, there's a puzzle
worthy of puzzlement.
Hi Sterling,
I agree to this, the issue of who gets discovery credit in itself is not so
important, as 50 years from now no-one wil remember it. There is however, an
accusation of scientific misconduct coupled to this case, and that is my primary
concern.
Note that I did *not* look at the URL with the observing logs myself. This
because I am involved in hunting small solar system bodies myself too, and if
ever I find a TNO (so far I found several main belt asteroids and one NEA) I
don't want to be accused of having pryed it from Brown's logs I based my
statements on what the logs contain, on what has been posted about that on the MPML.
The point that after they obtained the archived NEAT and POSS positions and
their own recovery data, Ortiz, Stoss et al. would not have much extra benefit
from Brown's positions, remains valid however. That they nevertheless accessed
them again, points out it was curiosity as to how their data compare to that of
Brown, i.e. the question whether it was the same object indeed.
- Marco
Sterling K. Webb wrote:
Hi, Marco
While I am far from a working knowledge
of the astrometric procedures, no practical
experience doing so, in other words, I note
that in addition to the the rough pointing data
you refer to, it appears that among the files
accessed were the ccd processing logs.
As I said earlier: the ccd processing logs...
are crucial too because they identify K40506A
in the field coordinates,
That is to say objects are identified by pixel
coordinates, i.e., 782, 349. If you have read the
specification of their ccd, say, a 1024 square
pixel array, you are able to pinpoint the position
of K40506A in the field. If then, there are other
identified objects, such as stars (which there
are) with pixel coordinates, one is able by
interpolation to fix the position of K40506A to
a high degree of precision and a fair degree of
accuracy (the two not being the same) for a
given time of exposure (which is also in those
logs).
Even I, a refugee from the pre-calculator era,
could do it with no resources beyond a sharp
pencil... That is why I said the access of those
logs was significant.
But, the matter is essentially a dead issue,
important primarily to the individuals involved.
I am much more interested in 2003EL61 itself!
Its shape, for example. Now, there's a puzzle
worthy of puzzlement.
Sterling K. Webb
---
Marco Langbroek wrote:
Sterling also wrote:
Stoss uses NEAT data, DSS and POSS data, to
refine the orbit. He never uses Brown's data? Wouldn't
that help refine it?
Not at all, because the telescope log data provide you with only rough telescope
pointing positions, not the arcsecond accuracy object positions Ortiz' data,
NEAT data, DSS and POSS provided. With the Ortiz, NEAT, DSS and POSS data
available through Ortiz' and Stoss observing data and Stoss's image archive
precovery activities, the addition of Browns/SMARTS telescope log data would not
have improved the orbital solution at all (rather, it would probably have
worsened it). The SMARTS log did not contain astrometry for the object, only
rough telescope pointing locations.
Yet, 20 minutes after the times of
his own Mallorca observations and recovery of the
object, someone at IAA is accessing Brown's positional
data AGAIN.
I am most curious. Why? Are they merely curious?
At this point, they have discovery positions (2003),
archival positions (NEAT, etc.), and current position
(Mallorca) of their object. Why check someone else's
data if you are not going to use it and claim that you
are not even sure if it's the same object?
As explained above, with the data they HAD at that time, Brown's data would not
have contributed anything valid at all to what they already had. Hence, this
MUST have been curiosity, yes. And understandable. There is that mysterious
reference to an object that could or could not be the same. It is
understandable that you compare the little that is known about that object to
your data.
In fact, with what orbital
data they already have, they can easily determine
from Brown's data accessed the first time that it
IS the same.
They could determine that it was very likely to concern the same object. Which
is interesting, but holds no further meaning. Curiosity could very easily lead
to further comparison. The fact that they accessed the data again after
accumulating a much larger and much more accurate body of data themselves,
points out that they did not acces the data in order to use it, but rather to
compare. This strongly suggest the question behind this was: is it really the
same object?. By contrast, if Browns data would have been the starting point
for
