More on the trans-Neptunian objects announced this week:
Mike Brown's team has been observing what they call the tenth planet for six months, working to pin down its orbit, size, and surface composition. They had been planning to make the announcement in October, gambling that nobody else would find the body. But Brian G. Marsden, director of the minor planet center, who urged him to make the announcement as soon as possible.
Marsden discovered that it was possible by looking on the Internet at the logs of the telescopes Brown's team had been using (big scopes are leased from the institutions that own them for individual observations) to find out where they had been pointed. He had reason, he said, to think someone had done that, "presumably" in preparation for their own observations. In fact, you can Google the designator names of the objects announced this week and find the logs online.
On the one hand, the information is publicly posted, if you know what to look for. But if it really happened, it could also be, in effect, spying on competing research teams to see what THEY have been looking at in order to try to get the scoop.
| | chimerac (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small} chimerac) wrote, |
Curiouser and Curiouser
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