Proposal #431

Comments

(4726) Kenneth Menzies — Oct. 1, 2023, 2:02 a.m.

George: This sure sounds like a shot in the dark. Is there any more info you could provide to support the effort?

(3663) Dirk Terrell — Oct. 2, 2023, 3:27 p.m.

Yes, the TAC would like to see a little more justification than this. What leads you to believe that 3 data points per week for six months is a good strategy? What is the evidence that leads you to believe it might be an exoplanet? Your job is to justify why you should get telescope time over other people's proposals. Our job is to decide which proposals are best for our resources and we can't do that with your proposal as it stands. Please provide more detail.

(4993) George Sjoberg — Oct. 2, 2023, 4:45 p.m.

Hello You are correct It is a shot in the dark. Here is the story ( a bit lengthy, i'm afraid)

Background. I have always been fascinated by the night sky and astronomy. I got my first cheap telescope when i was a teenager. and my first real real tel telescope in 1984 (I was 39) a gift from my wife She had worked at NASA on the Saturn 5 project and so she too was enamored with space and astronomy. So all of this made a family absorbed in astronomy Our daughter built a radio telescope for an eighth grad science project and listened to radio signals from Jupiter caused by Io passing thru Jupiter's magnetosphere.
Part 2: A short while ago a family friend named a star Sjoberg thru Star Registration. Our granddaughter (named Io by our daughter!) was amazed that there was a star named Sjoberg. Her first question "does it have a planet like Earth going around it?" There then ensued a discussion of exoplanets and how they are found. My godson's son and daughter also became interested.
Part 3: Since 2005 ive had a C14 located in Mayhill New Mexico. It is in great need of updating and is offline while we decide if we really can afford to get i up and running again.
Finale: I thought it might be educational to give them a real world example of how exoplanets are found. I also understand that this is not the purpose of the robotic telescopes of AAVSO. I thank you for your consideration. Perhaps two images a few weeks apart can be done and i can use them to give the kids a lesson.

again, thanks for your consideration

(3663) Dirk Terrell — Oct. 2, 2023, 5:58 p.m.

Seeing as this is such a bright star, I decided to look at the TESS data available for it. If you're not familiar with the TESS mission, it observes an area of the sky for about a month at a time (called a "sector") with very high precision (better than a millimag at this brightness) looking for exoplanets. It has been observed in TESS sectors 14,15,21,41,48, and 49. I looked at the first three of those sectors and saw nothing beyond a constant star at the sub-millimag level. If this star showed anything remotely close to a transit observable from the ground, they would have detected it. I suppose a transit could be hiding in the data gaps, but the odds of that are pretty low.

TESS mission: https://tess.mit.edu/

(3663) Dirk Terrell — Oct. 10, 2023, 4:33 p.m.

George, the TAC cannot approve this star in light of the results from TESS. However, I will send you the TESS data that I have so that you can show your granddaughter how NASA looked at her star and didn't find anything yet. I will send you an email with the details.

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