Come be a postdoc in our lab! We are fun and do interesting stuff with planetary ices and salts and spectra and irradiation and sometimes we just throw things. Email me for Qs.
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| Website | mikebrown.caltech.edu |
Mike Brown is now on bluesky
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Astronomer, planet hunter, Plutokiller, bear whisperer, finger-wrapped dad. Dangerous secularist. He/him.
We lost the first two hours of the night to some instrument problems but the gremlins have been purged and we are on the sky. But what is the chance that Planet Nine is RIGHT WHERE WE WOULD HAVE LOOKED AN HOUR AGO? Given my current luck, nearly 100%, I'd say.
something something friday the 13th mumble mumble something
Excited to start the second night of our Planet Nine search. Weather on Mauna Kea is, once again, perfect. Except that for some reason the telescope has lost all contact with the camera that sits on top of the telescope. This is..... not good. Instrument problems are always frustrating, but especially when the weather is as spectacular as looks like it is going to be tonight.
Last night at the Subaru telescope was pretty spectacular. Now we just need two more. (Planet Nine moves so slowly across the sky that we can only track its motion over the course of several days).
Beginning of our last night of the Planet Nine search here at the Subaru telescope . We have had truly reprehensible weather for almost every attempt over the past 6 (!) years, meaning that we are about to be overtaken by the Vera Rubin Observatory (yay! though) and might as well close up shot. And on our last attempt: the weather is looking spectacular. While California is about to get pummeled again Hawaii is in a super clear bubble. So... fingers crossed?
Tonight is, I think, the beginning of our last attempt to find Planet Nine with the Subaru Telescope. If it's not in this week's data we'll probably wait for the Vera Rubin Observatory to come on line and revert to those data. But for tonight the skies look clear, the winds are calm, and the area of the sky where we think Planet Nine is most likely to be is perfectly placed. Stay tuned!
Daniel SwainKauai?
Nope! Butte County, California. #CAwx #CAwater
👀📷 Check out this awesome picture of the Phantom Falls in the North Table Mountain Ecological Reserve north of Oroville, CA! All the rain over the last week has led to these normally dry creeks becoming waterfalls. #CAwx
Photo Credit: Mike Manzone
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/NWSSacramento/status/1611207301725036544
Robert McNeesThe dwarf planet Eris was discovered by astronomers Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz #OTD in 2005. It appeared in data that had been collected much earlier, on October 21st, 2003.
There it is, the tiny moving dot on the left of the gif.
More: https://web.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/
Image: @Mikebrown