Read Online How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mike Brown
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emulsion was sometimes a little uneven, and the computer might have picked out a slightly brighter spot that really was just the sky. A tiny speck might appear that was possibly a faint star, but I was not quite convinced. In all of those not-entirely-sure cases, I would simply press “maybe.”
“Y ES !” was reserved for the no-questions-no-problems-definitely-really-there-moving-through-the-sky cases. Every day I would come in thinking that perhaps today was the day that I would finally push the “Y ES !” button. Every day I would spend hours staring at the computer screen, pushing “no,” and occasionally, very occasionally, “maybe.” But the “Y ES !” button remained untested. After going through the entire set of potential planets that the computer had picked out, I never once used the “Y ES !” Final score: “no,” 8,734; “maybe,” 27; “Y ES !” 0.
It was hard not to feel distressed. What if there really
were
no other planets out there? What if three years of photographing and computing and blinking came down to nothing at all? What if the big project designed to make my splash as a young professor at Caltech disappeared without a ripple? I had been telling everyone for three years now that I was looking for planets, that I was going to
find
planets. What if there were no planets?
I still had hope, though, in the twenty-seven maybes. I spent much of the fall of 2001 at Palomar Observatory trying to track them down. For a few dark nights every month, I would drive to the mountaintop, arriving early in the day to plan for the night and prepare the telescope, eating dinner before the sun was closeto setting, packing up a bag full of truly awful snacks designed to keep me awake throughout the night, and then heading for the control room of the 60-inch telescope.
This telescope had a modern digital camera, which meant that it was quite sensitive but that it covered a tiny area of sky. The nights were carefully choreographed so that I could spend the most time looking at the expected locations of the twenty-seven maybes. Because a full year had passed, they had moved quite a ways, and it was impossible to know precisely where they might be, so I would spend hours scouring large parts of the sky, taking a picture, and coming back to the same spot an hour later and taking another picture. I didn’t even bother writing a computer program for these; I would just look at the blinking images on my computer screen the second that they came down from the computer. All night, every night there, I would take a picture, move the telescope over, immediately start another picture, stare at the last picture while taking the current picture, and continue on until dawn. Then I would slowly and wearily walk the winding road the half mile back to the Monastery, often startling foxes or bobcats out for a dawn hunt. Around noon, I would wake up, have breakfast, and begin the day again.
During those first few months tracking down maybes, I felt excited when the sun went down.
Tonight is the night! I would think.
As the fall progressed, though, I was slowly becoming dejected.
I spent so much of my time at Palomar Observatory that fall that I didn’t have to think twice when I got a request to give a talk at the observatory to a group associated with Caltech. I was going to be there the night before anyway, so I figured I might as well stay one more night to give the talk. On my calendar I just wrote “talk to some group.” The group was to arrive by bus inthe late afternoon, take a tour of the massive Hale Telescope, and eat dinner and hear my talk on the floor of the dome with the telescope perched overhead. It sounded fun. I like giving talks to groups like this.
The afternoon the group was to arrive, I waited on the dark ground floor of the observatory until I heard a knock on the door. As I opened it, I was blinded by the afternoon sun. When my eyes adjusted again, I finally saw the organizer of the tour
“Y ES !” was reserved for the no-questions-no-problems-definitely-really-there-moving-through-the-sky cases. Every day I would come in thinking that perhaps today was the day that I would finally push the “Y ES !” button. Every day I would spend hours staring at the computer screen, pushing “no,” and occasionally, very occasionally, “maybe.” But the “Y ES !” button remained untested. After going through the entire set of potential planets that the computer had picked out, I never once used the “Y ES !” Final score: “no,” 8,734; “maybe,” 27; “Y ES !” 0.
It was hard not to feel distressed. What if there really
were
no other planets out there? What if three years of photographing and computing and blinking came down to nothing at all? What if the big project designed to make my splash as a young professor at Caltech disappeared without a ripple? I had been telling everyone for three years now that I was looking for planets, that I was going to
find
planets. What if there were no planets?
I still had hope, though, in the twenty-seven maybes. I spent much of the fall of 2001 at Palomar Observatory trying to track them down. For a few dark nights every month, I would drive to the mountaintop, arriving early in the day to plan for the night and prepare the telescope, eating dinner before the sun was closeto setting, packing up a bag full of truly awful snacks designed to keep me awake throughout the night, and then heading for the control room of the 60-inch telescope.
This telescope had a modern digital camera, which meant that it was quite sensitive but that it covered a tiny area of sky. The nights were carefully choreographed so that I could spend the most time looking at the expected locations of the twenty-seven maybes. Because a full year had passed, they had moved quite a ways, and it was impossible to know precisely where they might be, so I would spend hours scouring large parts of the sky, taking a picture, and coming back to the same spot an hour later and taking another picture. I didn’t even bother writing a computer program for these; I would just look at the blinking images on my computer screen the second that they came down from the computer. All night, every night there, I would take a picture, move the telescope over, immediately start another picture, stare at the last picture while taking the current picture, and continue on until dawn. Then I would slowly and wearily walk the winding road the half mile back to the Monastery, often startling foxes or bobcats out for a dawn hunt. Around noon, I would wake up, have breakfast, and begin the day again.
During those first few months tracking down maybes, I felt excited when the sun went down.
Tonight is the night! I would think.
As the fall progressed, though, I was slowly becoming dejected.
I spent so much of my time at Palomar Observatory that fall that I didn’t have to think twice when I got a request to give a talk at the observatory to a group associated with Caltech. I was going to be there the night before anyway, so I figured I might as well stay one more night to give the talk. On my calendar I just wrote “talk to some group.” The group was to arrive by bus inthe late afternoon, take a tour of the massive Hale Telescope, and eat dinner and hear my talk on the floor of the dome with the telescope perched overhead. It sounded fun. I like giving talks to groups like this.
The afternoon the group was to arrive, I waited on the dark ground floor of the observatory until I heard a knock on the door. As I opened it, I was blinded by the afternoon sun. When my eyes adjusted again, I finally saw the organizer of the tour
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