On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

So this was published in the Astronomical Journal this month:

https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ad34d5

I found out via TrekBBS. As I noted in one of my replies: we still need to keep in mind that Star Trek is as much alt-history as space adventure. All those extra nebulae, the existence of ETI confirmed, and so on...

Just...wow.

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-mirror-astronomers-exoplanet.html

https://simbad.harvard.edu/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=LTT+9779&submit=SIMBAD+search

If anyone had told me when I was a child reading astronomy atlases that I would live long enough for images such as these to become available to the average human beings of any and almost all countries, I might have laughed. Or maybe not. I was already a fan of Space: 1999 and Star Trek by the time I hit grade 4.

And now we're here. At this point. It's happened.

Phil Plait does a write-up on a planet orbiting a tight-orbit binary star system. Of course, there's a deep-cut Star Wars comment in there...

TIC 172900988 is the simplest catalogue number on file for that star right now. Here are the others on file at SIMBAD:

TYC 2483-160-1
2MASS J08343881+3133147
Gaia DR1 709709089004925440
GSC 02483-00160
Gaia DR2 709709093301608448

Note: For Trekkers' purposes, it's 800 light-years away, viewed in the constellation Cancer from here on Earth. So I guess that puts it well past the Klingon holdings...?

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/exoplanet-catalog/7989/tic-172900988-b/
https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/overview/TIC%20172900988
http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/tic_172900988_(ab)_b/

The job search continues. I've got two offers, one I have to decline because lack of experience and temperament. The other seems to be real, and might be interesting. There's no guarantees, of course, but I'll wait for the reply to my reply.

While I keep looking for other leads in the meantime, there's this episode of Ideas about the sounds of space, "Music on Mars". And there is sound to be listened to and to be listened for.

More later...

More good stuff from Kevin Jardine.

Stars with planets are green-circled with numbers of known planets where known. And some extra stuff thrown in that we didn't know we needed to chart...

https://twitter.com/galaxy_map/status/1337901467160743939

An exercise in advertising for interstellar colonisation. More details on the Flickr page in the link!

Kevin Jardine just posted a progress report on his 50 Parsec Map Project today on Twitter. In the course of that report, he notes the proximity of HD 10180 - currently known to host at least six planets and suspected to host as many as three more - to Achernar/alpha Eridani.

Now, where does it get interesting for Star Trek fans?

Here, per a Memory Alpha entry caused by a reference in dialogue in the Original Series episode "Wolf in the Fold", written by Robert Bloch. (Yes, that Robert Bloch. The Psycho scriptwriter. And yes, that episode - adapted by Bloch from his 1943 Jack the Ripper-inspired short story is one of many that we can now see as Problematic in ways that were not clear to the eyes of the dominant factions of American society in the late 1960's.)

Anyway, Star Charts and Stellar Cartography put Achernar inside Romulan-held territories from 2161 - the end of the Earth-Romulan War - to at least 2387, and the destruction of Romulus and Remus that year. HD 10180 would be close enough - 15 light-years distant, per the planetarium-'ware Celestia - to be considered another Romulan holding.

Had this pointed out to me a few minutes ago at NCF's Speakers' Corner:

https://www.physics-astronomy.com/2016/06/new-research-suggest-andromeda-and.html

Our galaxy and Messier 31 might already be "touching"...

Exoplanet.eu's count as of yesterday: 4248.

So, that's seven new-to-humanity planets in two weeks. The process of automating discoveries really is picking up speed, isn't it?

Per exoplanet.eu, the count of confirmed exoplanets is now 4241.