> Congrats to 1202 Program Alarm for being chosen as SETI's User of the
> Day!
>

Thanks Misfit! Fame at last!

---

Metal Detecting

Astronomers release image of planet-like companion

April 4, 2005

(PLANETQUEST) -- A team of European astronomers has released an image of a substellar companion within the dusty disc surrounding a young star. The estimated mass of the object is between 1 and 42 times that of Jupiter. It is located about twice as far from the star as Jupiter is from the Sun and takes about 1,200 years to complete a single orbit, according to information posted on the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia.

The star, GQ Lupi, is located in the constellation Lupus and belongs to a class known as T Tauris -- very young, lightweight stars at an intermediate stage prior to becoming main sequence stars like our Sun.

The image was obtained using an infrared camera on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. A paper announcing the discovery has been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. More information is available on the website of the Astrophysical Institute and University of Jena Observatory.

---

me@rescam.org

Friends of PlanetQuest Newsletter Vol 1, No 2

**The PlanetQuest Mission: To inspire the people of the world with the thrill of individual discovery, a better understanding of our uniquely precious planet, and a wider perspective on our place in the universe.**

Dear Friends,

First, we would like to say welcome to our many new subscribers! We are very encouraged by the great number of you who signed up for our newsletter during March. No doubt many of you first heard about us in the recent wired.com article-see
http://www.wired.com/news/space/0,2697,66757,00.html?tw=wn_tophead for the complete text. In the fast-paced world of the news media, information about scientific discoveries and projects, which are by their very nature, quite complex, can often be misstated; the wired.com article was overall a bright exception. We do wish to acknowledge the heroic efforts of all planet discoverers to date-it is not easy to
find another world!

We are making progress daily, and as you will see by the reports below, PlanetQuest is continuously moving along multiple fronts. None of this could be happening without the superb and dedicated efforts of individuals who are specialists and experts in their fields.

Many thanks to Dr. David Carico, our Education Director, for his update on the education front!

===================================

**Our Education Project**

One of our most important goals here at PlanetQuest is that you, the "PlanetQuester," be able to learn more about astronomy while you search for new worlds. We are glad to report that our "educational front" is moving forward with steady progress. We have a detailed task list, an overall timeframe, and quite a good idea of what "learning astronomy with PlanetQuest" will be like.

When everything is up and running you will find numerous links throughout the Collaboratory and our website, each of which will give you a chance to learn. Some links will provide simple glossary definitions; others will open up brief illustrated essays; still others will lead to animations that let you participate and explore on your own.

Our first category of content will be "The History of Astronomy." From this link you will be able to learn about any of 24 initial topics, including Chaco Canyon, Chichén Itzá, Stonehenge, ancient Chinese astronomy, Polynesian star navigators, the oldest written astronomical record-and many more! Look for this first educational link soon!

**The Collaboratory Project**

Collaboratory software development is blazing ahead. We continue to make improvements to the core algorithms that will do all the processing work in the Collaboratory. Aside from additions to the core Transit Detection Algorithm (TDA), we're putting together the pieces for the first-ever automated Stellar Classification engine that will compare targets against known stellar types. This will not only help optimize TDA searches, it will also help you classify stars more completely and share that important data with the larger scientific community.

We're continuing to donate our time and code to the BOINC project (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/), which provides our distributed computing management layer. PlanetQuest team members are collaborating with BOINC programmers and the larger open source community to make BOINC the best, most robust distributed computing platform ever devised.

We're also putting the finishing touches on a Macromedia Flash-based preview Collaboratory demo that we hope to post to the site soon. Stay tuned!

**Astronomy and Observing**

We have arrived at that most exciting time of year-requests for time at observatories and the beginning of our observing season! The Milky Way is rising to be in the optimal position for our telescopes to gather the maximum amount of data on a huge number of stars. Soon we will begin observing at the Crossley telescope at Lick Observatory (http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/) on Mt. Hamilton, above the city of San Jose, California. Our observing season there will run from the beginning of June through September-long nights of taking images of stars in the most densely crowded region of Sagittarius. Our astronomers will be working a minimum of 12-hour days, beginning around 7 pm, and straight through the night until after dawn every night that is clear enough for observing. (You can see how our weather is by checking http://mthamilton.ucolick.org/hamcam .) Because we use the photometric transit (light measuring) method, weather conditions (clouds, fog) and the atmosphere over the observatory have a large impact on our ability to take good images (also called taking data). A historical note: the Crossley is a Victorian-era telescope using state-of-the-art equipment for a cutting-edge science/distributed-computing project! An incredible contrast and a tribute to the Crossley-quite a story in itself. Incidentally, the Crossley was the world's first modern reflector, and Lick Observatory the world's first professional mountain-top observatory.

We are manufacturing a new prime focus spider mount to accommodate a corrector that will increase the field of view of the Crossley to a much wider angle (40 by 40 arcminutes) in order to record hundreds of thousands of stars. We are collaborating with the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and using a state-of-the-art Kodak back-lit, blue-sensitive CCD (charge couple device).

We are currently awaiting word on an observing proposal at a telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, also for observing time during June.

**Our Fundraising Efforts**

Fundraising efforts are also proceeding on multiple fronts, as we work to educate potential donors about exactly who we are, why this project is world-class, worthwhile, and important to the global community from both the educational and scientific standpoints. If you are someone or know of someone who would relish the opportunity to make a difference and bring positive change to our world, please consider a contribution (we've made this easy right on our website (http://www.planetquest.org/support/), and tell your friends and colleagues about us. For the price of two hot chocolates per month, you can help us build PlanetQuest into the world-changing organization it can be! For those thinking of contributing on a large scale, we are happy to meet with you and explain our project in more detail. We are a registered 501(c)(3) US nonprofit organization, so your donations are completely tax-deductible. As always, thank you for your interest, enthusiasm and support!

===================================

**Quote of the Month**

"Mortal though I be, yea ephemeral, if but a moment I gaze up at the night's starry domain of heaven, Then no longer on earth I stand; I touch the Creator, And my lively spirit drinketh immortality."

Claudius Ptolemy (140 AD, Astronomer)

===================================

Best Wishes,

Laurance Doyle, PhD
President and Cofounder

David Gutelius, PhD
Executive Director and Cofounder

---

me@rescam.org

can we participate to beta test on boinc??

---

_______________
Thanks
Hugo
<A HREF="http://www.boincsynergy.com/">
<img src='http://www.boincsynergy.com/images/stats/comb-939.jpg'>

> can we participate to beta test on boinc??
>
Yea, can we sign up for the BETA Test ? I like the screensaver :)

---

Everything you need to know about the upcoming PlanetQuest BOINC project!

Read through this thread to find out info on PQ and other cool astronomy projects!

Click on either button below for current PQ information, public discussion, and future PQ updates!

(If you so desire feel free to copy these buttons to use on your own webpage!)

---

me@rescam.org

Why are you closing a thread that's not yours?
Besides, it's a great thread! I'd like to know more about the development of this project as it develops.

---

Dunno, but if the post ratings are any indication of interest...

---

> ....
> .... I'd like to know more about the development of
> this project as it develops.
>

Then go here and sign up for their newsletter. You'll be sure to be kept abreast of the development as it occurs. I'm already receiving it.

L8R....

T'Khasi Time: Tuesday, 19 April 2005 - 07:35 PM --700 (Pacific Standard Time)

---

CAPT Siran d'Vel'nahr - L L & P _\\//
Winders 11 OS? "What a piece of junk!" - L. Skywalker
"Logic is the cement of our civilization with which we ascend from chaos using reason as our guide." - T'Plana-hath

Friends of PlanetQuest Newsletter Vol 1, No 3

**The PlanetQuest Mission: To inspire the people of the world with the
thrill of individual discovery, a better understanding of our uniquely
precious planet, and a wider perspective on our place in the universe.**

Dear Friends,

We have had a most amazing and fruitful month, as you probably know if
you’ve been keeping an eye on our website. Support, new collaborations
and proposed collaborations, a new member of the Board of Directors,
additional telescope time, offers from you, our Friends of PQ, to
contribute to our website…it’s a long list, very heartening, and keeping
us quite busy!

And speaking of our website, we are always interested in your thoughts,
ideas, suggestions, and feedback. Feel free to send comments or ideas to
us at info@planetquest.org.

===================================
**News**

Well, we have made news again! In April, at a meeting with Chabot Space
and Science Center to tell them about PlanetQuest and to discuss
possible educational collaborations, we met British software
entrepreneur Dill Faulkes, who, having a passion for public education in
the sciences, was quite interested to hear of our venture. After
meeting with our Board of Directors member Jeremy Crandell, President
Laurance Doyle, and Executive Director Dave Gutelius, Dr. Faulkes was so
enthusiastic about our mission that he gave us two-thirds time access to
two identical, world-class 2-meter telescopes—one on the island of Maui,
Hawaii and the other at Siding Spring, Australia. He built these
telescopes, at a cost of $20 million, for a math and science education
venture he created and funded in Great Britain in the late 1990s called
the Faulkes Telescope Project. Both telescopes can be operated
robotically and controlled over the Internet using a normal PC.

Needless to say, we are thrilled at what this can do for our ability to
bring millions of stars to PlanetQuesters searching for planets. The
Faulkes Telescopes will enable us to observe millions more stars now, to
be able to observe much fainter (and therefore more of the smaller and
sun-like) stars, and to be able to detect smaller planets (approaching
terrestrial-type). See the complete story at
http://planetquest.org/news/releases/index.htm. You’ll find photos of
the telescopes at http://www.faulkes-telescope.com/ as well as on our
site. Dr. Faulkes has also joined our Board of Directors.

**Educational Collaborations**

PlanetQuest is attracting a lot of attention from educational quarters.
As mentioned above, Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland,
California, invited us to come and give a presentation about who we are
and what we hope to accomplish. As education is a major interest of
PlanetQuest—not just for people in colleges or universities, but for
all—as well as for Chabot, a collaboration between us is natural and
exciting. We are also in discussions with two other well-known
organizations regarding possible fits between our activities and goals,
and hope to soon have more news regarding these possibilities.

**The Collaboratory Project**

We continue to make good progress towards our beta-version
Collaboratory, with important breakthroughs in optimizing the Transit
Detection Algorithm (TDA) for compatibility with the open-source BOINC
distributed computing platform. The stellar modeler is being built now
and being run against data to test for accuracy and speed. It’s
certainly exciting to see the various bits of the Collaboratory finally
coming together. Alpha testing is going well so far, and thank you to
all those who offered their computers (we’re keeping the alpha in-house
for now). Our next big steps include porting the Collaboratory to all
of those wonderfully diverse computing platforms, and helping the BOINC
project with some important issues.

PlanetQuest Cofounder and Executive Director David Gutelius is also
working with the PQ team on enhanced feature sets for the software.
While we can’t tell you much about them quite yet, they’ll make you feel
like you’re a part of the universe and allow you to meet other folks in
some really innovative ways. More leaked soon!

**Astronomy and Observing**

Literally moments after we sent out our last newsletter, we received
word from Siding Spring Observatory in Australia that our proposal for a
study to evaluate a way to detect planets around binary stars by
eclipse-minima timing had been accepted. We have time on the 1-meter
there from approximately mid-June to mid-July. This is an exciting
proposal, as, if the method proves successful, it will be a new way to
detect planets around other stars.

And, of course, we will begin to use the two robotic Faulkes Telescopes
very soon. We will be able to operate these ‘scopes while at the same
time observing from the Crossley at Lick Observatory as well as while
observing from the 1-meter at Siding Spring. Two 2-meter telescopes will
provide us with an incredible increase in the number of stars we’ll be
able to observe.

We have entered the final design phase for the new
field-corrector/reducer and prime-focus spider mount for the Crossley
0.9-meter telescope at Lick Observatory where we have been given four
months of observing time, to acquire data on stars for your transit
studies in the galactic plane (we are starting in the constellation
Cygnus this year—the same region that the NASA Kepler spacecraft will be
pointing at after its launch in June 2008).

**Website**

Some of you have offered, and some have already completed, translated
portions of our website into other languages, and we are truly excited
about this! Our dream from the beginning has been to offer all of our
information in as many of the world’s languages as possible. Those of
you who have offered to help with this will be hearing from us very soon.

We have updated and increased the amount of information and photos on
the telescope pages on our website. For a good look at the telescopes
we’ll be using, see http://www.planetquest.org/about/facilities/,
especially the Northern and Southern Hemisphere pages.

As you’ll see, we have some of our “Learn” pages up
(http://www.planetquest.org/learn/), and will continue to add more as we
are able. These are not as we will present our education pages in the
long run, but the quality of the information and the photos was worth
putting up while we proceed with our project.

**Television**

Look for PlanetQuest President Laurance Doyle on an upcoming National
Geographic special called Extraterrestrial. While the show does traverse
into science fiction, it gets there from a sound basis through
discussions with scientists and astronomers about what the possibilities
are for life around another star. The program will air in two parts
during mid-May. The first fifteen minutes of each show are the most
science-packed, with discussions of circumstellar habitable zones around
the smallest stars, stellar flares, and a bit about modeling of tidally
locked extrasolar planets’ atmospheres. Then it’s on to interestingly
weird alien creatures struggling for dominance in a harsh environment.

**Our Fundraising Efforts**

Do you want to help build an organization that changes lives and
inspires people on a global basis? If you are someone or know of someone
who would relish the opportunity to make a difference and bring positive
change to our world, please consider a contribution to PlanetQuest
(we’ve made this easy right on our website at
http://www.planetquest.org/support/), or tell someone else about us.
Even small donations can make a big difference, so please spread the
word and consider making a secure subscription donation each month. For
those thinking of contributing on a large scale, we are happy to meet
with you and explain our project in more detail. We are a registered
501(c)(3) US nonprofit organization, so your donations are completely
tax-deductible. As always, thank you for your interest, enthusiasm and
support!

===================================

**Quote of the Month**

“People like you and I, ...do not grow old
no matter how long we live. What I mean is
that we never cease to stand like curious
children before the great Mystery into which
we were born.”

Albert Einstein to Otto Juliusburger (1942)
===================================

Best Wishes,

J. Ellen Blue
Publications Director

Laurance Doyle, PhD
President and Cofounder

David Gutelius, PhD
Executive Director and Cofounder

more Info


PlanetQuest Homepage

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

Friends of PlanetQuest Newsletter Vol 1, No 4

**The PlanetQuest Mission: To inspire the people of the world with the thrill of individual discovery, a better understanding of our uniquely precious planet, and a wider perspective on our place in the universe.**

Dear Friends,

May has turned out to be a month of hard work. During the past month, we have begun work on incorporating translations of some of our pages, added a new director to our board, hosted a star party at Lick Observatory (well, it was a cloud party spiced with historical observations!) with a UC Light and Optics class of Dr. Doyle’s, added to the website, and begun equipment modifications on our telescopes.

We are forging ahead, looking forward to a very busy summer, and looking forward to telling you, our friends and supporters, all about it.

===================================

**A New Board of Directors Member**

In early May, Dr. Zoran Ninkov of the Rochester Institute of Technology accepted our invitation to become a member of the PlanetQuest Board of Directors. Dr. Ninkov has collaborated with PlanetQuest cofounder and President Dr. Laurance Doyle for many years, providing us with state-of-the-art CCDs as well as technical and observational assistance for nearly a decade in the world’s first search for extrasolar terrestrial-sized planets. (References to this work can be found at http://planetquest.org/about/research/extrasolar.html.) Dr. Ninkov has been involved in the field of astronomy for many years. A current (although brief) bio of him can be found on our website (http://planetquest.org/about/people/).

**Other Collaborations**

We are pleased to announce that PlanetQuest and the SETI Institute (http://www.seti.org) are joining forces. SETI Institute will provide materials and technical support for the PlanetQuest mission, and the two organizations will participate in selected joint fundraising efforts. This is not only a mutually beneficial but also extremely natural collaboration. For many years, SETI Institute has been engaged in a radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence, and has now expanded that search with an optical component. SETI also supported early distributed computing projects (SETI@home) that many of you may have participated in, and that has provided the foundation for the PlanetQuest Collaboratory. We are extremely excited about our two organizations working together to bring the excitement of discovery to you.

**New Download!**

Dr. Bob Slawson, one of our observing astronomers, has created a nifty planet transit simulator. You can specify different types of observing scenarios (both earth- and space-based), star and planet sizes, offset, and signal to noise characteristics. The simulator then renders an animation of your target as well as a sample light curve, based on your settings. It’s a great way to understand the basics of the photometric detection method you’ll use to detect planets and other phenomena. Download it at: http://www.planetquest.org/download/PlanetTransit.jar. If you have Java (required), you can run it by typing ‘java –jar PlanetTransit.jar’ (without the quotes) in the directory where you saved it.

**Our Education Project**

We continue to add pages to our Learn category on the website (http://www.planetquest.org/about/learn/). Several additional pages are waiting “in the wings,” so to speak, as we await permissions on photos and other input. As brief as the Learn pages are, we are very proud of the content and information provided, and we of course provide links to other sites of interest and reference materials. We will soon add an updated and improved home page for Learn, as well as several new Learn offerings. And if you have any requests, let us know!

**The Collaboratory**

Imagine the next generation of distributed computing—a way not just to contribute your cpu cycles to other people’s science projects, but also to perform your own experiments, collaborate with others around the world in different types of observations, classify stars no one has ever classified before, and learn about math, astronomy, and physics. Imagine a distributed computing tool that encourages you to create and share your own constellations and asterisms, that allows you to participate in global observing missions, and that creates communities. Watch the PlanetQuest website for additional details soon about what we’re building into the Collaboratory—there’s nothing like it!

**Astronomy and Observing**

Astronomy is the most interesting science to work with… okay, let’s say “a” most interesting science, not to be too biased. For one thing, the scientist (astronomer) cannot control the experiment; either he/she is ready to photograph the event when it occurs, or not. The event occurs regardless. Years ago, we traveled to Baja California to view the 1991 solar eclipse and had to set up cameras and other equipment in time to be ready for it. We were ready, but some of the scientists from other fields were nervous wrecks, realizing there would be no second chances!

Such is it now, with our observations on the Crossley 0.9 meter telescope at Lick Observatory. The field corrector we have ordered has been delayed, which in turn has delayed our observations until mid-August or so. The part of the Galaxy we will be observing will be “setting” toward the end of September, or at least, not optimally observable. This is still a developing issue and our astronomers are working with the company producing the equipment. All is not lost, as we still have our month’s observing time on the Siding Spring 1-meter as well as two months at Lick Observatory.

**Your Help Is Most Appreciated**

We value your interest in PlanetQuest, and your support of every kind. Some have offered translations of website pages; others have offered materials or other kinds of assistance. We are thankful. If you want to make a difference and bring positive change to our world, please consider a contribution (we’ve made this easy: just go to http://www.planetquest.org/support/donate), and tell someone else about us. For as little as $10 per month, you can help us build PlanetQuest into the world-changing organization it can be! For those thinking of contributing on a large scale, we are happy to meet with you and explain our project in more detail. We are a registered 501(c)(3) US nonprofit organization, so your donations are completely tax-deductible. As always, thank you for your interest, enthusiasm and support!

===================================

**Quote of the Month**

“What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths…!”

Christianus Huygens (1670)

===================================

Best Wishes,

J. Ellen Blue
Director of Publications

Laurance Doyle, PhD
President and Cofounder

David Gutelius, PhD
Executive Director and Cofounder


and


From PlanetQuest, software for stargazers

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

www.planetquest.org

This is a developing Distributed Computing project that will analyze data to help detect planets orbiting other stars than our own. Take a look at the website - it's very well done.

This project will do great things for astronomy, not only through research but in increasing public interest and involvement. If you can afford to donate, it's tax deductable, and it looks like it will be a great project.

Everything you need to know about the upcoming PlanetQuest BOINC project!

Click the button below for current PQ information, public discussion, and future PQ updates!

---

me@rescam.org

Boinc update from PlanetQuest newsletter:

"**The Collaboratory**
We continue working hard to bring the Collaboratory to life. PlanetQuest cofounder Dr. David Gutelius is working with a team of design experts on the look and feel, and David Rowland has made significant progress in translating the ideas into OpenGL BOINC project. Programmer Dr. Jay Doane is working with our resident signal detection expert, Dr. Jon Jenkins, on optimizing the algorithms we’ll be using in the Collaboratory. Our alpha test runs are looking strong so far, and we are on track for our Beta testing program late this year."

Friends of PlanetQuest Newsletter Vol 1, No 5

**The PlanetQuest Mission: To inspire the people of the world with the thrill of individual discovery, a better understanding of our uniquely precious planet, and a wider perspective on our place in the universe.**

Dear Friends,

It seems every time we send out our Newsletter, some big event happens, and we have to wait for the following issue to tell you about it. Right after our last issue, CNET News.com published a fine article about us on their website! (See the link below.)

This last month, our observing astronomer Dr. Robert Slawson arrived at Siding Spring, Australia to begin a month-long run observing in Baade’s Window (see his excellent report below), and a few days ago, we received our R (red) filter for the Crossley telescope at Lick Observatory. We also continue to make progress with the development of the Collaboratory, several new Learn pages have been added to our website, and we are very close to putting up some of our pages in German! Many thanks to those helping us with these projects, and thank you Friends of PlanetQuest for your continued interest and support.

===================================

**News!
“Astrophysicist Laurance Doyle wants to get the world discovering worlds—and in the process get children jazzed about science and math.

“With record low test scores in the sciences in the United States, American schoolchildren are lagging behind youth of other nationalities and causing concern about the future of the country’s thought leaders and astronomical discoverers. That concern has driven Doyle and his team at nonprofit PlanetQuest to develop software to harness the computing power of millions and help people discover new planets and stars.”

With these words, CNET News.com staff writer Stefanie Olsen began an excellent article on PlanetQuest dated May 31, 2005. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can read the full text at http://news.com.com/from%2bplanetquest%2c%2bsoftware%2bfor%2bstargazers/2100-1008_3-5726511.html?tag=nefd.lede.

**Our Education Project**
We’re quite pleased with the progress of our Learn pages (http://www.planetquest.org/learn/) on the website, and have just added nine new pages on cultural and historical aspects of astronomy, as well as archaeoastronomy sites throughout the world. We have many more scheduled for completion in the coming weeks and months, and hope you will enjoy them. We welcome any suggestions you may have for other topics.

**The Collaboratory**
We continue working hard to bring the Collaboratory to life. PlanetQuest cofounder Dr. David Gutelius is working with a team of design experts on the look and feel, and David Rowland has made significant progress in translating the ideas into OpenGL BOINC project. Programmer Dr. Jay Doane is working with our resident signal detection expert, Dr. Jon Jenkins, on optimizing the algorithms we’ll be using in the Collaboratory. Our alpha test runs are looking strong so far, and we are on track for our Beta testing program late this year.

**Astronomy and Observing**
As noted above, our astronomer Bob Slawson is at Siding Spring, Australia observing in the region of the sky known as Baade’s Window. For a good look at Baade’s Window, see http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021223.html. Imagine trying to identify an individual star in that region! But that’s precisely why we are observing there—the more stars, the better the chances of finding a planet. As you can see, the software designed to sort out all the variations in light received by our CCDs from each one of those stars has to be extremely complex and sophisticated, and that is why the Collaboratory is so important.

Bob has reported that Siding Spring greeted him with quite a bit of rain the first few days, but then he was able to get some data. There have been some fairly minor technical details that needed to be worked out, but it sounds like he’s settling in, and if the weather proves more cooperative, he should be able to obtain a reasonable amount of data for PlanetQuesters to analyze. These observations will also be used to study a technique codeveloped by Laurance Doyle, Hans Deeg, and Jean Schneider using eclipsing binary stars to discover planets. To see live how the weather is for observing at Siding Spring, try this site: http://nightskylive.net/sd/

Here is Bob’s report:

FIRST WEEK AND A HALF OF PLANETQUEST AT SIDING SPRING OBSERVATORY

Wednesday, June 29: More rain is falling. Managed to get 2 nights of data earlier this week although only 1 of the nights was “photometric.” Those are the only usable nights out of the first 12.

The field that we are monitoring is known as Baade’s Window, a line-of-sight toward the center of the Milky Way with surprisingly little interstellar dust. Dust absorbs and scatters starlight, dimming and reddening the stars. As a result of the lack of extinction and the concentration of stars toward the Galactic center, there are a high number of stars accessible with only a modest-sized research telescope. At the southern hemisphere latitude of SSO, Baade’s Window passes nearly overhead around midnight at the end of June. So this is the optimal time, astronomically, to be here.

The telescope is a 40-inch Boller & Chivens built in 1963 owned and maintained by the Australian National University, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics. On the telescope, we’re using the Wide Field Imager, a camera built 6 years ago that consists of 8 4K x 2K CCDs arranged as an 8K x 8K pixel mosaic. (Unfortunately, one of the CCDs is no longer working.) With such a large focal plane, 3/4 of a square degree of the sky can be imaged at a time. Each raw image produces a data file of 140 Mb.

The primary scientific goal of the observing project is to try and detect the presence of third bodies orbiting around eclipsing binary systems. Eclipsing binaries are two stars in close orbit about each other but that, since they are far away, appear as only one star in the sky. Their mutual orbit is oriented so that when one passes in front of the other, some or all of the light from the other as seen from Earth, is blocked. This results in a periodic dimming of the light from the “star” that can be accurately measured. An unseen third body, a Jupiter-sized planet perhaps, orbiting around the pair should induce small changes in the time of the eclipse depending on its size and distance from the stars. To date, no planets have been found by this method so we are hoping for a first.

The weather, however, has not been good for astronomy. As of yesterday, 137.8 mm (5.4 inches) of rain has been recorded falling on Coonabarabran, the nearby town of some 3000 persons. More is falling here as I write and there was even some snow up at the observatory at the end of last week. Tough on astronomers but very good for farmers. Australia has been suffering from a 5 year drought, the worst on record. Last year the total rainfall in Coonabarabran for the entire month of June was only 26.2 mm and the average rainfall for June for the last 125 years is only 56.1 mm or about 2.2 inches.

Three more nights for this half of the run, then 4 nights off to let someone who really needs moonless nights use the telescope. After that another 15 nights in Baade’s Window. --- Bob Slawson

**Our Fundraising Efforts**
Recent fundraising efforts have focused on becoming more well-known through such articles as the ones by CNET’s News.com and Wired.com. We are hoping to excite potential donors about this cutting-edge, educational science project, the first ever with the potential to involve millions of people, from all cultures and regions, in the search for extrasolar planets. If you too would like to make a difference in and bring positive change to our world, please consider a contribution (we’ve made this easy: just go to http://www.planetquest.org/support/donate), and tell your friends about us. For as little as $10 per month, you can help us build PlanetQuest into the world-changing organization it can be! For those thinking of contributing on a large scale, we are happy to meet with you and explain our project in more detail. We are a registered 501(c)(3) US nonprofit organization, so your donations are completely tax-deductible. As always, thank you for your interest, enthusiasm and support!

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**Quote of the Month**

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.”

Carl Sagan

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Best Wishes,

J. Ellen Blue
Director of Publications

Laurance Doyle, PhD
President and Cofounder

David Gutelius, PhD
Executive Director and Cofounder

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me@rescam.org

[off-topic]I was beginning to think they were all named David *lol* Dr. David Anderson, Dr. David Gutelius, David Rowland... ;) How many David'sare involved in boinc projects, I wonder? *lol* (sorry for my weird sence of humor)[/off-topic]

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September 29, 2005

Are we alone in the universe? Are there planets like Earth around other "suns" that might harbor life? Thanks to a recent technology breakthrough on a key NASA planet-finding project, the dream of answering those questions is no longer light-years away.

On a crystal clear, star-filled night at Hawaii's Keck Observatory in Mauna Kea, NASA engineers successfully suppressed the blinding light of three stars, including the well-known Vega, by 100 times. This breakthrough will enable scientists to detect the dim dust disks around stars, where planets might be forming. Normally the disks are obscured by the glare of the starlight.

Engineers accomplished this challenging feat with the Keck Interferometer, which links the observatory's two 10-meter (33-feet) telescopes. By combining light from the telescopes, the Keck Interferometer has a resolving power equivalent to a football-field sized telescope. The "technological touchdown" of blocking starlight was achieved by adding an instrument called a "nuller."

This setup may eventually help scientists select targets for NASA's envisioned Terrestrial Planet Finder missions. The success of those potential future missions, one observing in visible light and one in infrared, depends on being able to find Earth-like planets in the dust rings around stars.

"We have proven that the Keck Interferometer can block light from nearby stars, which will allow us to survey the amount of dust around them," said Dr. James Fanson, project manager for the Keck Interferometer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. That survey will begin in late 2006 after the team refines the nuller's sensitivity level.

Combined information from all of NASA's planet-hunting missions will provide a complete picture of possible Earth-like planets: how big they are, whether they are warm enough for life, and if their atmospheres and surfaces show chemical signatures of current life.

"People have been talking about whether there are other earths out there for 2,500 years. Only now are we developing the technology to go find out," said Michael Devirian, manager of NASA's Navigator Program at JPL, which is investigating potential planet-exploring missions.

So far, scientists around the world have found 150 planets orbiting other stars. Most are giants, like Jupiter; none is as small as Earth. Scientists believe the best odds of finding life outside our solar system are on Earth-sized planets, particularly those with the right temperature, density and chemistry.

JPL manages the Keck Interferometer and the Terrestrial Planet Finder missions for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The W.M. Keck Observatory is funded by California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA, and is managed by the California Association for Research in Astronomy, Kamuela, Hawaii.

thanks for this, more Info can be found here

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2005-157

and here

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/keck_planet_finding_ability.html?3092005

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli

9/30/05 - NASA Takes Giant Step Toward Finding Earth-Like Planets
+ Quicktime (download with caption 11.3Mb): Keck Interferometer accomplishment

Astrophysicist Laurance Doyle wants to get the world discovering worlds--and in the process get children jazzed about science and math.

With record low test scores in the sciences in the United States, American schoolchildren are lagging behind youth of other nationalities and causing concern about the future of the country's thought leaders and astronomical discoverers. That concern has driven Doyle and his team at nonprofit PlanetQuest to develop software to harness the computing power of millions and help people discover new planets and stars.

"Students are losing interest because they don't know enough to know what they don't know. So the idea is to get them interested in participating in speaking the language of the universe, which is math," said Doyle, PlanetQuest co-founder and a principal investigator at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute.

Seems altruistic enough, but the yet-to-be-released software is grounded in an already widely deployed experiment in distributed computing, the SETI@Home program. SETI@Home allows desktop and workstation users to contribute computer processing time to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. SETI@home software has been installed on more than 5.4 million desktops, according to the SETI@home Web site. Still, people have yet to successfully find extraterrestrial life.

The idea for Menlo Park, Calif.-based PlanetQuest is to harness the same computing force of the public, but to give people a real chance to find and name their own planet or star. Only 1 percent of the stars in the galaxy have been classified or looked at in-depth, and there's roughly a one in a 5,000 to 10,000 chance that people will find one, according to PlanetQuest Executive Director David Gutelius.

"It's better odds than the lottery, but everyone will discover something about stars," Doyle said.

Space exploration is of growing interest in the high-tech community. The X Prize Foundation, a nonprofit that develops competitions to promote breakthroughs in space and related technologies, named Google co-founder Larry Page to its board earlier this year, along with Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and chief of SpaceX, an orbital rocket company.

Late last year, Mojave Aerospace, led by aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built and flew the world's first private spacecraft to the edge of space to win $10 million from the Ansari X Prize.

Google's lead engineer, Wayne Rosing, recently left the company to become a senior fellow in mathematical and physical sciences at the

University of California, Davis. Rosing will work on the proposed Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, which is expected to be complete by 2012 and is designed to find dark matter and dark energy created by gravity-bending light from distant galaxies.

PlanetQuest's software, which is a screensaver download that runs during off times of computer usage, contains models of all the different star types and planets that exist. It will absorb data from the remote telescopes, downloading observations on the stars' brightness and the algorithms to match stars and planets. The program analyzes light curves to see what kind of star it is--there are about 147 basic types. The user's computer does the calculations, and if a match occurs, it will send an alert of a new discovery.

"I'm looking for projects that can use today's technology to get kids real experience with the scientific process."
--Dill Faulkes, British entrepreneur "What we do is a dynamic match in between what star catalogs are out there (there aren't many) and what hasn't been classified--then we classify it," Gutelius said.

With the software, people can call up detailed information about the discovery, such as the star's region, where it's located (such as Pegasus), and its distance in the galaxy.

PlanetQuest's software draws partially on a planet detection method Doyle helped develop that was the basis for NASA's Kepler Mission, a $500 million space project to search for habitable planets. The technique, called the transit method, looks to a planet to orbit in front of its parent star. The light drops off, and the star "winks" at you. If the transit is repeatable, then it can be a method for discovering and confirming planets even smaller than Earth. But the wink can be tricky: A star can also wink if it has a spot on it or if there are different colored stars set in the atmosphere.

PlanetQuest will acquire its data from as many as six telescopes by its launch. The software is expected to be in its test phase by December. It uses the Crossley 0.9-meter telescope at the University of California's Lick Observatory and the Siding Spring 1-meter telescope in Coonabarabran, Australia. The company also recently received $20 million in support in the form of telescope time from Dill Faulkes, a British entrepreneur who has set up two fully robotic telescopes on the island of Maui and at the Siding Spring Observatory.

In an interview, Faulkes said inspiring children in the sciences is very important through projects such as PlanetQuest. "I'm concerned about lethargy, particularly in the West, for science. I'm looking for projects

that can use today's technology to get kids real experience with the scientific process."

"This is using astronomy to bring science into the home," he said.

PlanetQuest calls its software a "collaboratory," in which people collaborate within astronomy and mathematics to find new planets or stars, as well as with others looking at the same matter. Eventually, the company plans to insert RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, feeds announcing new discoveries among its members. During its initial test phase, it will allow only 50,000 people to install the software, given the limits on its resources. But eventually it aims to host a community of 20 million, according to its founders.

Eventually, the nonprofit hopes to offer an enhanced version of the software for a fee so the project can be self-sustaining. And with any luck, if it hits a billion users, PlanetQuest hopes to fund its own Kepler Mission, company founders say.

The software will have five levels of education. Level one, called "Sun is your friend," will be for very young students. Level five will be for people who want to know exactly how the algorithms work. For the truly geeky, people can transfer planet coordinates to their home telescopes.

"So they'll point to that star and say, 'It's a million times too faint for me to see, but that's my star. I'm now down in astronomical history as a discoverer,'" Doyle said.

Its a bit long:)
I cant wait for the software to come out.

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Scorpions - Wind Of Change