The consensus for thousands of years was that the heavens were unmoving, unchanging. Of course, Galileo changed all that. Fellow amateur astronomer Rick Johnson has a running project to image the proper motion of Barnard's star (taking images once each year for the past seven years, so far), the star in our galaxy with the fastest known proper motion, and the second closest star to our own. Here is his write up on this interesting star, followed by his animated gif of its motion:
http://www.spacebanter.com/showthread.php?t=198080
Barnard's star is the second closest nighttime star system to us at 5.98 light-years and the closest north of the celestial equator. It is a red dwarf star thought to be over 7 billion years old possibly nearly as old as our galaxy. While it's part of the sky, Ophiuchus, is easily visible to virtually the entire world but for the south pole, it can't be seen without a telescope. At about magnitude 9.5 in green light it is about 1/25th as bright as the faintest star we can see. It's claim to fame is that it is the fastest moving star in the sky. It moves over 10" of arc per year across our skies (1 second of arc is the size of a quarter at 3 miles). This "rapid" motion made it a candidate for looking for a wobble in its motion caused by a planet or planets. This, long before the spectroscopic wobble method was possible. Most found no planet but Peter van de Kamp of Sproul Observatory at Swarthmore College using the observatories excellent 24" refractor did. This caused a great interest as the first exo planet discovered when first announced but it soon dissolved into controversy when the others failed to verify it or the second he later claimed to have found.
I was at a Midstates Astronomical League convention at which he spoke about his "discovery" in 1970. I remember it well as when opened for questions, which he seemed not to want to answer, I asked about the lack of confirmation with larger scopes and the possibility of systematic errors. I was told in no uncertain terms they had accounted for all such errors and was made to feel as if I had questioned God. The glare I got was deadly, as sharp as his curt answer. It pretty much squelched the question period. Now we know that it likely was just about what I suggested. Each time the lens was cleaned the two elements were separated then put back together again, the star wobbled. Analysis of the images showed a similar displacement of other stars with each cleaning. Many stars in the field wobbled. An obvious sign of some sort of error. Though he went to his grave certain of his discovery.
Still he refereed the very paper showing the wobble in other stars in the field. He was scientifically honest, just blind to his errors. Not an uncommon failing of us humans. In fact he suggested there was a
second half Jupiter sized planet involved even after others were saying something was amiss with his first discovery. Today's Doppler measurements show no sign of a companion (possible if it orbits in a
plane perpendicular to our line of sight). However no other telescope has detected his wobble, including Hipparcos which was many times more sensitive than his telescope. Nor did the HST find any sign of a
Jupiter or half Jupiter sized companion which is within its capabilities. We now know some math shortcuts he took (this was before astronomy department computers) compounded minor errors into big ones. His "discovery" may be dead but I still have nightmares about the glare I got for questioning his "discovery."
The frames making up the animation vary greatly in time and number. I tried to equalize Barnard's star in the frames and ignored what this did to the rest of the field. This made making the movie extremely difficult. In the 1912 version I gave up and used the best frames for the background and only inserted the star and those within a half minute of arc or so of the star into this background. So you'll see the stars right around Barnard's star change with each animation step but not the background. I found this less annoying than the entire field varying greatly. For the addition of the 2013 year I used my somewhat improved techniques to give another try at equalizing the vastly different images. After several days of work and a lot of false starts I have something sort of usable. I hope the star variation isn't too annoying.
Matching color under the varying conditions only added to the problem. I see now why virtually all animations of this star use mono images. Color makes it a major pain in the backside. The 2013 data was taken August 3 at 03:42 through 04:56 UT. I'd only intended to use 2 luminance frames but clouds so reduced the brightness of the images I ended up taking 4 and still had a worse signal to noise ratio than for most of the other years when I used only one or two.
![[Image: BS2007-13a.gif]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=www.prairieastronomyclub.org%2Fastrophotos%2FBS2007-13a.gif)
http://www.spacebanter.com/showthread.php?t=198080
Barnard's star is the second closest nighttime star system to us at 5.98 light-years and the closest north of the celestial equator. It is a red dwarf star thought to be over 7 billion years old possibly nearly as old as our galaxy. While it's part of the sky, Ophiuchus, is easily visible to virtually the entire world but for the south pole, it can't be seen without a telescope. At about magnitude 9.5 in green light it is about 1/25th as bright as the faintest star we can see. It's claim to fame is that it is the fastest moving star in the sky. It moves over 10" of arc per year across our skies (1 second of arc is the size of a quarter at 3 miles). This "rapid" motion made it a candidate for looking for a wobble in its motion caused by a planet or planets. This, long before the spectroscopic wobble method was possible. Most found no planet but Peter van de Kamp of Sproul Observatory at Swarthmore College using the observatories excellent 24" refractor did. This caused a great interest as the first exo planet discovered when first announced but it soon dissolved into controversy when the others failed to verify it or the second he later claimed to have found.
I was at a Midstates Astronomical League convention at which he spoke about his "discovery" in 1970. I remember it well as when opened for questions, which he seemed not to want to answer, I asked about the lack of confirmation with larger scopes and the possibility of systematic errors. I was told in no uncertain terms they had accounted for all such errors and was made to feel as if I had questioned God. The glare I got was deadly, as sharp as his curt answer. It pretty much squelched the question period. Now we know that it likely was just about what I suggested. Each time the lens was cleaned the two elements were separated then put back together again, the star wobbled. Analysis of the images showed a similar displacement of other stars with each cleaning. Many stars in the field wobbled. An obvious sign of some sort of error. Though he went to his grave certain of his discovery.
Still he refereed the very paper showing the wobble in other stars in the field. He was scientifically honest, just blind to his errors. Not an uncommon failing of us humans. In fact he suggested there was a
second half Jupiter sized planet involved even after others were saying something was amiss with his first discovery. Today's Doppler measurements show no sign of a companion (possible if it orbits in a
plane perpendicular to our line of sight). However no other telescope has detected his wobble, including Hipparcos which was many times more sensitive than his telescope. Nor did the HST find any sign of a
Jupiter or half Jupiter sized companion which is within its capabilities. We now know some math shortcuts he took (this was before astronomy department computers) compounded minor errors into big ones. His "discovery" may be dead but I still have nightmares about the glare I got for questioning his "discovery."
The frames making up the animation vary greatly in time and number. I tried to equalize Barnard's star in the frames and ignored what this did to the rest of the field. This made making the movie extremely difficult. In the 1912 version I gave up and used the best frames for the background and only inserted the star and those within a half minute of arc or so of the star into this background. So you'll see the stars right around Barnard's star change with each animation step but not the background. I found this less annoying than the entire field varying greatly. For the addition of the 2013 year I used my somewhat improved techniques to give another try at equalizing the vastly different images. After several days of work and a lot of false starts I have something sort of usable. I hope the star variation isn't too annoying.
Matching color under the varying conditions only added to the problem. I see now why virtually all animations of this star use mono images. Color makes it a major pain in the backside. The 2013 data was taken August 3 at 03:42 through 04:56 UT. I'd only intended to use 2 luminance frames but clouds so reduced the brightness of the images I ended up taking 4 and still had a worse signal to noise ratio than for most of the other years when I used only one or two.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens
"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "
- Dr. Donald Prothero
