Blue Collar Scientist

I’ve finally completed the video about data reduction at Junk Bond Observatory. In this video, we answer the question of how Junk Bond Observatory got its name, and provide a demonstration of what our images look like and how we turn them into scientific results. The demonstration by Dave is followed by a higher-resolution screen recording to show you the details, so stick with it to the end if you are interested in seeing the images up close. (And yes, I know this isn’t the best way - I’ve been learning whole new continents of my computing system doing this, and I am learning, but if I wait to post until I’ve learned everything, I’ll never get around to posting this stuff.)

In the next video, I’ll have answers to the rest of the questions that people asked after the first video was posted, and hopefully it won’t take me so long to get it posted. What can I say - I’m on a working trip. Work comes first, and even though the formal purpose for the visit was fulfilled sometime yesterday, I’ve still been quite busy taking care of loose ends and addressing things that I felt needed to be dealt with before I left.

Tomorrow will be a semi-travel day for me; I’ll be leaving JBO around noon Arizona time and heading up to Tucson, with a long stop to visit some people in between. Then Wednesday is a travel day. Blogging will continue to be light, sporadic, and possibly sub-standard until I’m home and have had a chance to sleep properly. But I’m hoping to get a few things posted from the hotel in Tucson, so stay tuned.

I thought I’d collect all the online examples I could find of reactions to the recent asteroid names. I’ll try to keep it up to date over the next few days. Please let me know of anything I’ve missed!

First, stuff written by the namesakes:

PZ Myers has posted on Pharyngula.

Michael Stackpole has some remarks here. I’m assuming this is going to get wide play on science fiction and gaming blogs; if you are reading this, would you alert me if you know of something?

Phil has posted on the asteroid bearing his name (Michael Stackpole and Rebecca Watson both drop by to comment) and then followed up about the relative sizes of the various asteroids I named in this batch (Rebecca does some good-natured gloating in the comments, and I clarify a few things as well).

Skepchick has coverage by a.real.girl, with Rebecca in the comments; and Rebecca herself posts to the SGU Blog.

Next, stuff written by others:

Archaeoporn covers all the names in one post!

Greg Laden heard about it on the radio and then followed up PZ’s posting.

The Bad Astronomy/Universe Today Forums are discussing things here.

I alerted the Skeptic Friends Network where I expect there will be some follow-up discussion.

The JREF Forums have a discussion kicked off by Rebecca.

Stuart Goldman, my old editor at Sky & Telescope, pointed out some T-Shirts of interest.

Phil is already getting international coverage.

John Scalzi waxes jealous.

Robert Sim, the roboticist, covers the story and demands photos.

The Classic BattleTech forums are discussing Stackpole here.

The Farpoint Forums are abuzz about Stackpole as well.

Jim Lippard discusses Stackpole on the Lippard Blog.

And Say We Did discusses the utter coolness of all this.

There’s a discussion going on at Atheism From Mexico (Ateísmo Desde México) which I don’t fully understand, because my Spanish is next to non-existent. I guess that the OP says I’ve named asteroids after four famous skeptics, and the follow-on has something to do with Rebecca’s house being seen in Google Earth? Someone help me out?

Brian Griggs, in a short and to-the-point message, approves of the asteroid Stackpole.

Rebecca makes the front page of Current with the story (permalink here).

The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast for this week leads with the news of Rebeccawatson and the other asteroids.

Tapetenageln reports on Stackpole.

AnakinWeb has a French-language discussion of Stackpole. I know French, and it seems someone reading the discussion thought it might have been an April Fool’s Day joke.

The Daily Camera, a Colorado newspaper, has a story and interview with Phil Plait about the asteroid named for him.

I may have named an asteroid after her, but I’m really not sure what to say about Rebecca Watson. There’s simultaneously too much, and not enough.

She has been an important catalyst in the skeptical movement. Despite skepticism’s generally firm philosophical condemnation of sexism, we have not always done a good job of making women feel welcome, and I think in most places, and at most times, we’ve utterly failed at putting skeptical women in touch with one another and facilitating the discovery of like minds. Leaving aside any reasons to abhor this that spring from our dislike of sexism, there’s still sufficient reason to regret it from the lost tactical and strategic advantage of having some women prominently on our side¹. Over the years, our movement, which I think we can all admit tends to attract a disproportionate number of white, middle aged men, has suffered as a result.

It seemed to me that Rebecca came out of nowhere and started fixing these problems, even before the rest of us had really noticed she was doing it.

So Rebecca first came to my attention and earned my admiration for defining a culture for skeptical women, and bringing them into our movement in such a way that many of them are now leaders. She’s a practitioner of practical, not merely theoretical, feminism. However, if she had not done this, I still would have considered naming an asteroid after her for the simple reason that she appears to have overcome physical laws and can occupy many spaces at the same time. I’m reliably told she has a real job; on top of this, she blogs; in addition to that, she’s on a weekly podcast - a very long weekly podcast, not a ten minute thing; on top of that, she had time to enter a contest to host a radio show at NPR; and guess what, she won, and now she’ll be hosting an NPR show on a regular basis; I hear her as a guest on all kinds of skeptical podcasts all the time; she has solved the global problems of crime and poverty²…. I’m exhausted just telling you about it; if I had to do all the stuff she does so well, I’d probably not last more than a week.

I guess I named an asteroid after Rebecca because I’m extremely impressed with her on a number of different levels.

The naming citation I submitted for Rebecca Watson reads:

Rebecca Watson (b. 1980), once a street juggler and magician, promotes science and rational thinking as publisher of the Skepchick blog, a personality on the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast, and as host of the radio show Curiosity Aroused.

Yeah, Rebecca was once a street juggler. How cool is that?

1. Nothing I say here should be so construed as to minimize the contribution of Eugenie Scott, etc. [↩]
2. Ok, so I’m getting a little carried away…. [↩]

Let’s cut right to the chase:

I am deeply privileged to have named asteroids after PZ Myers of Pharyngula; Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer; Rebecca Watson, founder of Skepchick; and Michael Stackpole, skeptic and science fiction author¹. Quick links to my thoughts on the names:

• PZ Myers
• Phil Plait
• Rebecca Watson
• Michael Stackpole

Please go off to their respective blogs and websites and offer these people the congratulations they richly deserve, and then come back to read the rest of the story.

…

As my handful of readers probably know, I’m an astronomer. I’ve done a bit of research on cataclysmic variable stars, active galactic nuclei, and asteroids. During the course of the asteroid work, my collaborator, Dave Healy, and I have discovered almost 500 asteroids.

Back in 2000 and 2001, I was involved day-to-day in an asteroid observing program in southern Arizona, at an observatory bearing the peculiar name Junk Bond Observatory. Its name is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the way it was financed, but it is a serious place, with robotic 0.4 and 0.8 meter (16 inch and 32 inch) telescopes devoted to research every clear night.

On the night of November 23, 2001, I was sitting in the cold at the 16″ instrument, trying to debug one of the endless problems this telescope had. In the course of a test run of my latest attempt to overcome the problem, I took three images of a previously unknown asteroid. The following night, I followed up on the find, and reported it to the Minor Planet Center, at Harvard. Within a day or two, I was credited with having discovered (yet another) new asteroid.

When first discovered, asteroids get a “provisional designation” - the year followed by a letter-number code. After the asteroid is followed for a while, and an accurate orbit is determined - something that typically takes several years - the asteroid receives a number. Once an asteroid is numbered, it may be named. The naming process takes a few months, so the asteroid names I’m discussing today, which I learned had been approved by the IAU last Friday, were being worked on in December and January, and were formally proposed to the IAU in February.

The asteroid I discovered on November 23, 2000 was originally called 2000 WG11. It was followed for a few orbits, and eventually numbered 165347. Now, it is officially named Philplait - but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

By the following spring, most of the telescope’s problems were under control, either fixed with nuts and bolts, or worked around with clever software techniques. My collaborator, Dave Healy, observed for most of the month of March, including the latter half of the month. He discovered new asteroids in the same way I had, on March 22, 23, and 29. After being tracked for a few years, they were duly given numbers:

• 2001 FB10, discovered on March 22, was numbered 153289. It is now officially known as Rebeccawatson.
• 2001 FP86, discovered the following night on March 23, was numbered 165612. It is now officially known as Stackpole.
• 2001 FC122, discovered on March 29, was numbered 153298. It is now officially known as Paulmyers.

A peculiarity of astronomy is that by long-standing tradition, the person who discovers an asteroid gets to name it. In order to do so, the discoverer must write a short explanation of the proposed name (called a “name citation”), and send it to the International Astronomical Union for approval. The International Astronomical Union is the international authority for celestial nomenclature - what they say goes, and their decisions about naming are respected by astronomers worldwide. These are the same people that demoted Pluto from planet status a few years back, so it is best not to trifle with their power.

(The IAU’s activities in naming celestial objects stand in sharp contrast to the companies selling the opportunity to name a star after a loved one. While some may consider this practice to result in an entertaining and worthwhile novelty, the name has no official standing and will never be heard of or used by astronomers.)

The number of asteroids Dave and I have discovered that are numbered but not named has been growing over the last year or two, and Dave started bugging me to propose some names. Discussions and brainstorming ensued. I take the responsibility of naming an asteroid exceptionally seriously. An asteroid name is forever, as Phil Plait points out:

Think of it: unless some future astronaut mines it, a billion years from now that rock will still be orbiting the Sun. Itʼs almost literally a piece of immortality.

I feel as though I have to give some careful consideration to the matter, and to choose names that are meaningful and important in some way. My longstanding interest in skepticism and in science education had previously resulted in me naming asteroids after Derek Colanduno and Robyn “Swoopy” McCarthy, the hosts of Skepticality, who had pioneered the new media of podcasting and put it to service for skeptical thinking. It seemed logical to continue the practice.

The next few postings to my blog will be about the people I chose to name asteroids after - and their namesake space rocks.

1. I’ve listed them in order of Technorati “authority.” [↩]

If you are interested in science, the skeptical movement, or rational thinking; if you read and enjoy Pharyngula (see also here), the Bad Astronomy Blog, or Skepchick; and if you want to meet other such people, here’s all you have to do:

Go to the coffee shop at Barnes and Noble, tonight, Thursday, March 20, at 7:00 PM.

This meetup is co-sponsored by Zach Miller of the blog When Pigs Fly Returns, Scott Elyard of Coherent Lighthouse, and by yours truly.

If you don’t know any of us, just look for the MacBook with the JREF sticker on it:

The meeting will be informal and social, but we’ve got a couple activities on deck. According to Zach:

Scott is going to show everybody how to draw Euparkeria and I’m going to teach people how pterosaurs folded their wings. Jeff (the BCS) will be giving the keynote speech, and I’ve heard that…whisper it softly…he’s made of cheese.

Zach must have at least some of his tongue in his cheek, for Scott was last seen complaining about his drawing of Euparkeria, and I do not actually have a speech prepared (although it is possible I am made of cheese - it seems we could somehow experimentally verify this at the meetup). I do look forward to a pterosaur demonstration from Zach and some dinosaur art from both Zach and Scott. I will have a couple videos to play regarding Mythbusters. And if I remember, I’ll bring my Atlas of Creation so we can all see the gorgeous pictures of fishing lures that they used in place of living insects.

We will also be discussing the next meetup - we’ll probably be doing this biweekly or monthly - and soliciting opinions on whether we want to pick a regular venue. But mainly, we’re there to have good conversation and a good time.