The Hill Star Map and Exoplanets

Ross 54
I've read in several places that the star Zeta Tucanae is directly behind Zeta 1 Reticuli, from the viewpoint of the star chart, and so isn't seen. Has this alignment any possible significance? Does it point at anything else at a greater distance, like the center of our galaxy, that of a neighboring galaxy, a pulsar, or a unusually prominent star, etc? Or could Zeta Tucanae itself be a likely benchmark for some reason?

Here is my map with Zeta Tucanae added. It is not difficult to get it to align with Zeta Reticuli, though I doubt that vector would intersect any close objects.




And, as y'all can see; it does little to improve the "viewability". And I think the map is more "recognizable" without the alignment (looks more like original). It seems more logical to think that the absence of the star in the original map is more due to a lack of anything interesting. The star is a class "F9.5" ( a little brighter than Sol, and "White"), age is around 2 - 3 billion years, and is 28 light years away.

It would seem a good candidate for life on a very quick first look.

JadeStar has offered a convincing explanation for the selective leftward and upward trend of supposed exploration in the Marjorie Fish interpretation of the Betty Hill star map. She has ably shown that stars and stars with exoplanets are concentrated in these directions.
In the two leftward reaching routes, we see that the greatest concentration of stars had ostensibly just begun to be reached in the early 1960s. The upward trending routes, which also recede into the background, seem to pass through a concentrated group of stars. It is as if our Sun was sought in this direction, while stars nearer to Zeta Reticuli in the same direction were ignored. There may be something about our star system, and us, that proved particularly interesting.
One is given to wonder how the network of exploration routes might have grown and ramified in the half century since the Hill's encounter. It seems remarkable that we would encounter an extraterrestrial race that is just beginning to travel to the stars.

As I have suggested elsewhere, though, perhaps it should not be so surprising. The Zeta Reticulans may be the nearest to us in technical development of any species in this part of space. We could have a good deal more in common with them than we realize.

This is just a quick note to say I am working on my final installment of this thread before starting an entirely new one with the video I am hard at work on tonight and the complete picture neatly summarized.

For now, I thought I'd post up an article from the July 1974 article in Skylook, the MUFON journal about the star map and Marjorie Fish's work which I came across when I began my research. It is a fascinating read and goes into detail as to how her interpretation and models were built.


Also of note is that one of her models of the nearest stars was used by Ohio State University's Astronomy Department at Perkins Observatory.

If that place sounds familiar, it is because that is the same observatory which detected the infamous "Wow!" Signal back in 1977.

I'm sure many of you have probably read this, but just in case....

Ok, as promised I'm finishing up my walk through of the stars on the HIll-FIsh map before posting the new summary.

Kappa Fornacis
Reference
Class: G2V (Exactly the same as our Sun)
Age: 5.7 billion years old
Distance from Earth: 71.6 light-years
Distance from Zeta Ret: 48.565 light-years
Planets: none found so far
Companions: none
Debris Disk: none
Metallicity: 0.3 (slightly less than our Sun)

2009 Post:Kappa Fornacis is a solar analog, ie, a star whose physical characteristics such as temperature, metallicity or the presence of nearby stellar companions are similar to those of the Sun. The same spectral type to the Sun, G2V, is a yellow dwarf with effective temperature is 5748 K. The value of metallicity is very close to solar, and its mass of 1.15 mass solar. Its estimated age is within the range from 5420 and 6760 million years, which corresponds to an age of 800 - 2000 million years older than the Sun

And another star about like the sun, a bit older again!

Additional notes: Unfortunately Marjorie Fish did not know the true distance to Kappa Fornacis. was 71 light years from our Sun. when she put together the map we didn't have an accurate stellar distance for it. It is only 48 light years from Zeta Reticuli though so it's worth a look however the star is not in the position that was indicated on the Fish interpretation of the map.

In order to get it to be in that area the map becomes badly distorted. Additionally, at 48 light years it would be the furthermost star from the Zeta Reticuli homeworld.

That said, it does not take away from the possible accuracy of her map because she concentrated primarily on the stars with lines or routes between them (of which Kappa Fornacis is not) So we are left to ponder the following question: If not Kappa Fornacis then what star was that?

I've done my own look and I suspect that rather than Kappa Fornacis, the star on the Hill-Fish map could actually one of the following stars:

HD 14412 G8V A 4 billion year old sunlike star 41 light years from our Sun and 26 light years from Zeta Reticuli.
HD 217357 K5 A slightly older sunlike star 27 light years from our Sun and 34 light years from Zeta Reticuli.
Gliese 42 (HD 5133) K3 star older than our Sun, 46 light years from our Sun 30 light years from Zeta Reticuli.
HD 16157 K7V A close eclipsing binary consisting of a K7V star 2 billion years older than our sSun and a small red dwarf. 38 light years from our Sun and 13 light years from Zeta Reticuli.

Or either one of these M-Dwarfs:
HIP 10812 M3
HIP 4569 M4

All interesting stars, but as yet no planetary systems have been found circling them. I will keep a keen eye on the literature to see if any pop up, especially habitable ones. Of note, everal of these stars were on various star lists for SETI and terrestrial planet search telescopes like NASA's Terrestrial Planet Finder and the ESA's Darwin.

Gliese 95
Reference
Class G5V (slightly cooler than the sun)
Age: About 3.9-4.1 billion years (roughly the same as our Sun)
Distance from Earth: 41.3 light years
Distance from Zeta Reticuli: 26.2 light years
Planets: none found so far
Companions: none
Debris disks: none
Metallicity: -0.24 (slightly less than our Sun)

This star is not often found as referred by its Gliese number, rather by its HD14412 designation
Yet another sun like star, still and always close to us... Maybe a rather unremarkable star except that it is a G5V class, exactly like the sun. It is very slightly colder and less luminous.

Additional notes: I have little else to add to this other than this star was on SETI Project Phoenix's star list during observations at Green Bank, West Virginia back in the 1990s.

Gliese 86 A
Reference
Class K1V
Age: 2.4 billion years old (about half as old as our sun)
Distance from Earth 35.6 light years
Distance from Zeta Reticuli: 10.2 light years
Planets: 1 (4-10 Jupiter mass)
Companions: 1 white dwarf, 18.4 AU from primary.
Debris disks: none

Much is still unknown about this star. However, it is a K0-1 V orange-red main sequence dwarf star, which can be considered somewhat sun like.

Additional notes: Back in 1998 a very large planet or brown dwarf companion to Gliese 86 was found. Initially thought to be a brown dwarf it is now suspect it is a planet 4 times the mass of Jupiter. It has been given the designation Gliese 86 b (lowercase letters are reserved for planets while uppercase letter are reserved for stars).

Additionally in 2007 a white dwarf companion was suspected to inhabit the system 36 AU from Gliese 86, effectively making Gliese 86, Gliese 86 A with the white dwarf becoming Gliese 86 B.

From Solstation: Beginning in 2005, astronomers with improved photometric data began arguing that the colors detected are compatible with a white dwarf of around 0.5 Solar-mass as well as a ~70 Jupiter-mass brown dwarf since "both types of objects fit the available, still limited astrometric data"; on the other hand, the hypothesized formation of the Gl 86 system with an inner Jupiter-class planet and an originally more massive companion -- a Solar-mass stellar progenitor that subsequently evolved into a white dwarf at around 18.4 AUs -- "represents a challenge to current models" given that the binary orbit may have widened by 40-50 percent with the mass-loss of the progenitor by the time it cast off its outer hydrogen and helium layers…


Alpha Mensae
Reference
Class: G5V
Age: 5.4 billion years
Distance from Earth: 33.1 light years
Distance from Zeta Reticuli: 13 light years.
Planets: none found so far
Companions: 1 red dwarf, 30 AU from primary.
Metallicity: 0.05 (About the same as our Sun)

2009 Post: Alpha Mensae is a yellow-orange main sequence dwarf star of spectral and luminosity type G5-6 V, with about 87 percent of Sol's mass, 84 to 91 percent of its diameter (Perrin and Karoji, 1987, page 236; and Johnson and Wright, 1983, page 659), and around 80 percent of its luminosity. The star may be as as enriched (102 percent) as Sol with elements heavier than hydrogen ("metallicity"), based on its abundance of iron (Cayrel de Strobel et al, 1991, page 285).

(...)Alpha Mensae has become one of the top 100 target stars for NASA's planned Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF)(...)
And guess, another sun like star! But let's go on…

Additional notes: Alpha Mensae was discovered to have a small red dwarf which orbits it at a distance of 30 Astronomical Units (AU) from its primary star. That's almost exactly the distance from our Sun that the planet Neptune orbits. Red dwarfs being small cool stars would be unlikely to have much of an effect on the habitable zone of Alpha Mensae at the distance the companion orbits, provided that orbit is mostly circular rather than highly elliptical. Early indications are that the companion's orbit is more likely to be circular. While no planets have been detected around Alpha Mensae it remains a high priority target and as previously noted, was on the target star list for the NASA Terrestrial Planet Finder (cancelled) and on the HabCat, habitable star list. It is a star worth keeping an eye on.

Gliese 86.1
Rem.: this star is not often found as referred by its Gliese number, rather by its HD 13435 designation
Reference
Class: K2V
Age: 9 billion years
Distance from Earth:
Distance from Zeta Reticuli:
Planets: None found so far
Companions: none

2009 post: Very little can be found about that star, but its stellar class K1III makes it a giant or subgiant orange or redish orange star.

Additional notes: There is not much else to add to the above. It's a red giant star near the end of its life. Any intelligent beings which might live around it on a planet would have a huge incentive to develop space travel and leave as their star's as Gliese 86.1's photosphere expands. The habitable zone of Gliese would move further out and making a once habitable planet inhospitable.

Gliese 59
Reference
Class: G 8.5V
Age: between 5-6.9 billion years
Distance from Earth: 62 light years
Distance from Zeta Reticuli: 42.3
Planets: None found so far
Companions: none

2009 Post: Rem.: this star is not often found as referred by its Gliese number, rather by its HD9540 designation. Again, a not popular star, with a spectral class of K0V. This makes it a main sequence dwarf, more red/orange than the sun (thus cooler).

I will leave the last 2 stars on the map except for the sun (Sol), Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, apart for the moment. I'll come back to them later.

Again, nothing new to add here.

Back to SpookyVince's 2009 post:

Star name -- Distance (ly) -- Spectral Type -- Visual Magnitude
Gliese 67 -- 41.4 -- G2V -- 4.96
107 Piscium -- 24.4 -- K1V -- 5.24
Tau 1 Eridani -- 45.6 -- F5/6V -- 4.47
Tau Ceti -- 11.9 -- G8Vp -- 3.49
82 Eridani -- 19.8 -- G5-8V -- 4.27
54 Piscium -- 36.2 -- K0+V -- 5.88
Kappa Fornacis -- 71 -- G2V -- 5.80
Gliese 95 -- 41.3 -- G5V -- 5.82
Gliese 86 -- 35.6 -- K0-1V -- 6.12
Alpha Mensae -- 33.1 -- G5-6V -- 5.08
Gliese 86.1 -- 183.6 -- K1III -- 7.06
Gliese 59 -- 63.6 -- K0V -- 6.98

We see that all the stars labeled on the map are of a stellar type comparable to the sun. We also see that with the exception of Gliese 86.1 and Gliese 59, they all are within 50ly, which makes them in fact close neighbours.

If so far, for none of those stars, a planetary companion supposed to be able to harbour life as we know it, has not been detected, we must notice that most are acceptable candidate. The reference links tells more: some of those stars are prime candidate for the search of such planets


What about Zeta 1 and 2 Reticuli then...?

First thing that we must notice is that they are respectively G2V and G1V. That's very similar to the sun. Also, they are situated at 39.5 light years from us, a distance remarkably in line with all the other stars quoted above.

ζ1 Reticuli is slightly less massive and luminous than the Sun. Spectral class of the star is G2.5 V.
ζ2 Reticuli has a very similar mass and luminosity to our Sun. The spectral type of the star is G1 V.

(source: en.wikipedia.org...)
Sol Station tells us more about this double star system: (Reference)

(...)Zeta1 Reticuli has become one of the top 100 target stars for NASA's planned Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF)(...)

Once thought to be old Population II, galactic-halo-type subdwarf stars, Zeta1 and its companion are more likely to be old disk stars (Da Silva and Foy, 1987), that may be as much as eight billion years old.

Additional notes on Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli: Once I accepted the very distinct possibility that the Hill-Fish map represents a genuine, testable piece of potential "alien cultural or scientific information" I began looking at it slightly differently. I began to see what appeared to be a logical exploration and migration pattern initiated by perhaps two things,: 1) Their good fortune to have evolved on a planet around a star that sits freakishly close to another for the section of the Galaxy we inhabit and 2) the relative sparsity of habitable stars in one direction and a bounty of them in several others.

I ask that you, for a moment think about the galaxy from the perspective of someone born on a planet around either or both stars of Zeta Reticuli, into a technological civilization older and perhaps more developed than our own.

The two stars of Zeta Reticuli are very similar to our Sun but older and more interesting than that, they sit less than 1 light year from each other. This is important because each star could host its own system of planets, some of which might be habitable. As others have pointed out in the past, this would be a very big incentive to develop not only space travel but interstellar space travel. Large telescopes on a planet around either Zeta Recticuli star could image planets around the other star, perhaps in great detail with no more than our current level of technology.This logically would make such a species more curious about other nearby exoplanets, especially for example if both stars host habitable planets.

Imagine if our nearest star, Proxima Centauri were less than 1 light year from the Sun and we could perhaps detect the gasses given off by life on a planet around one of them? At less than a light year away that would be possible with our current spectrographs.

Now imagine pictures of oceans and continents on one of the planets or perhaps even detecting the lights of a city on one of them. Again, we are not far off from being able to do this with current technology.

How much different would our ideas about interstellar flight be?

As it stands right now, the stars seem almost insurmountable distances to us. But for an inhabitant of Zeta Reticuli they would be practically next door with their nearest star less than 1/4th the distance to Proxima Centaruri for us. Beyond this they would have two other stars close to them than Proxima is to us. A brown dwarf 2.8 light years away called L127-19 and two red dwarf stars called BD-69 177 A and B.

I'd also like to add that most of the stars on this map were older than our Sun, meaning that life around them if it exists likely had at least a billion year head start in evolving in most cases. What will life on Earth be like in a billion years? What will our technology consist of? It's almost impossible to imagine what are technology will be in 10,000 or a million years in the future much less a billion. As we've seen in the time since SpookyVinces's 2009 post several planets have been found around the stars on the Hill-Fish star map. At least one confirmed planet is a habitable zone Super Earth around Tau Ceti with another colder world on the fringe of the habitable zone.

Suffice to say, there are many good reasons that sentient, spacefaring, intelligent beings would want to visited those star systems and as we ourselves learn more about them, the more enticing they become for our own future exploration.

Next I will move on to a couple of substitutions which might be interesting for two stars on the map.

Ross 54
I've read in several places that the star Zeta Tucanae is directly behind Zeta 1 Reticuli, from the viewpoint of the star chart, and so isn't seen. Has this alignment any possible significance? Does it point at anything else at a greater distance, like the center of our galaxy, that of a neighboring galaxy, a pulsar, or a unusually prominent star, etc? Or could Zeta Tucanae itself be a likely benchmark for some reason?

I'm thinking of something like a 'prime angle', analogous to a prime meridian on an Earthly map, with Zeta 1 Reticuli likened to Greenwich, and something at the angle of Zeta Tucanae as as the second point of reference, like the North pole.

As you see in one of Betty Hill's models Zeta Tucanae was in fact on her map.

I've marked it on this map as well though I do not have a line drawn to it:



Zeta Tucanae is a younger star than our Sun (between 2.1 and 3 billion years old). It's 28 light years from Earth and 13 light years from Zeta Reticuli. Its Metallicity is about the same as the Sun.

It's an F class star so it won't live as long as our Sun and due to is young age its unlikely advanced, technological life would have evolved there if we assume that the timescale of biological evolution is the same universally. We've yet to find any planet around it

It also has a debris disk about at 2.3 AU or about at the distance of Mars in our solar system. Other than that, there's not a lot to say about Zeta Tucane other than it's a young system, not too unlike how ours was about 1-2 billion years ago.

The first star just off of the Hill Fish which I'd point out is Upsilon Andromedae which could be substituted for Gliese 67 as presented in this view:



It is the orange marked star just to the left up Gliese 67.

Upsilon Andromedae A
Upsilon Andromedae
Reference
Class: F8V
Age: 3.3-4.0 billion years
Distance from Earth: 44 light years
Distance from Zeta Reticuli: 66.4 light years
Planets: 4 Gas Giants so far including one Gas Giant in habitable zone (Upsilon Andromendae A d)
Companions: Upsilon Andromedae B an M-class (M4.5V l) red dwarf star which orbits Upsilon Andromendae A at a distance of 750 AU or 0.01 of a light years away. About 15 time further from Upsilon Andromedae A as Pluto is from the Sun.
Debris Disk: none
Metallicity: 0 (nearly identical to our Sun)



Two impressions of moons around Upsilon Andromedae d



Upsilon Andromedae A is a yellow-white dwarf similar to the Sun but somewhat younger, more massive, and more luminous. Its age has been put at around 3.3 billion years (source: Geneva-Copenhagen survey) and the star has a metallicity (proportion of iron to hydrogen) roughly the same as that of the Sun.The amount of ultraviolet radiation received by any planets in the star's habitable zone would be similar to the ultraviolet flux the Earth receives from the Sun. A planet, with about two-thirds the mass of Jupiter, was found around Upsilon Andromedae

Three years later, two companions of larger mass were announced orbiting at about 0.8 and 2.5 astronomical units As one of the SFSU researchers, Debra Fischer, pointed out, this important discovery "implies that planets can form more easily than we ever imagined, and that our Milky Way is teeming with planetary systems." The greatest surprise at the time was the presence in one system of so many giant worlds. Theorists had only just begun to adjust to the idea of Jupiter-size planets in very small or highly elongated orbits. But this new triple-jovian system promised to cause an even bigger shake-up of ideas of planet formation.

Most notable of these world is Upsilon Andromedae A d. A gas giant with a mass 3.75 that of the largest planet in our solar system, Jupiter. It sits firmly in the habitable zone of Upsilon Andromedae A and it is the target of searches for exomoons (Moons around extrasolar planets). It is theorized that due to the metallicity of the star and the size and mass of Upsilon Andromedae d that such moons could be at least as large as the largest moon in our solar system, Jupiter's Ganymede if not larger.

Mars and even Earth size and larger moons have been created in planetary formation models for this system.

Here's a comparison of masses of the largest moons with the terrestrial planets in our solar system:


Water was detected within the Upsilon Andromeda system as well....

From Solstation:
Water Emissions - In September of 2002, a team of astronomers (including Cristiano Cosmovici of the Institute for Cosmic and Planetary Science) announced at the Second European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology that they had detected water "maser" emissions from three of 17 star systems suspected of hosting planets, including Upsilon Andromedae, using the 32-meter Medicina radio telescope near Bologna. These microwave emissions could be generated from water molecules in a planet's atmosphere when they are excited by the infrared light of its host star.

As such there is a great amount of interest in finding any moons around the habitable zone planet Upsilon Andromedae A d.



Our second star system of of interest, just off of the map is HD 40307 (also known as HP 27887 as it is marked on the maps below) which if lined up just the right way could be substituted for Alpha Mensae.

It is the orange star I marked just to the right of Alpha Mensae..



And the map as seen from a different perspective puts it right where Alpha Mensae is.



Allowing for error, there is a possibility that Alpha Mensae on Marjorie FIsh's map might have in fact been HD 40307.... Read on...


HD 40307
Reference
Class: K2.5V
Age: 4.5 billion years (Same as our Sun)
Distance from Earth: 41.7 light years
Distance from Zeta Reticuli: 13.6 light years
Planets 6 known so far including 1 P-class habitable zone terrestrial planet (HD 40307g) and 3 Super Earth or Sub-Neptune sized worlds.
Companions: none
Metallicity: -0.31



Discovered on October 28, 2012




From the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at Arecibo:


A team of European-American astronomers announced the discovery of a new potential habitable exoplanet around the star HD 40307, a star slightly smaller than the Sun and 42 light years away in the constellation Pictor. HD 40307 is the third known star system with as many as six planets(1), and the first one of such with a potentially habitable planet.

The star HD 40307 was previously known to have three planets. The research team discovered three additional ones, including the one potentially habitable, HD 40307g. They used a novel statistical tool, the HARPS-TERRA software(2), to extract the faint signals of these objects from data from ESO's HARPS Instrument.

HD 40307g is a superterran(3) at least seven times more massive than Earth orbiting the star at the right distance to support liquid water. The planet could have a size between 1.9 and 2.5 Earth radii depending on composition, either rocky or water-rich, respectively. HD 40307g receives on average about 67% of the light Earth receives from the Sun.

The research paper “Habitable-zone super-Earth candidate in a six-planet system around the K2.5V star HD 40307” was accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The co-discoverer Hugh Jones, of the University of Hertfordshire in England, surmised: "The longer orbit of the new planet means that its climate and atmosphere may be just right to support life."

The most amazing thing is HD 40307 is just about the same age as our Sun so HD 40307 might have sentient beings sitting on their version of Above Top Secret pondering if the objects in their sky come from one of the nearby stars such as Zeta Reticuli (only 13 light years away from them, if they exist).

And that wraps my analysis of stars on or very close to the map for now. The next post on this subject (not in response to the stuff I already posted in this thread) will be the posting of a nice video I put together which lays out all of this research along with a summary so keep an eye out for the new thread which I intend to keep updated as new information comes in from the exoplanet and astrobiology world.

Incidentally there may be some new planets announced by the Kepler team this week. Stay tuned.

As promised... We can now add 10 new Earth sized planets (1-2 times the size of Earth) in Habitable Zones to our knowledge.

These 10 are all around G or K stars either identical or similar to our Sun.

The Kepler Science Conference (2nd one) is in full swing now, having opened this morning. It runs from October 4-8:

They are streaming everything live and there are some interesting new discoveries (10 Earth size planet candidates in the habitable zone) complete with slides and a chat.






Tune in here: connect.arc.nasa.gov...

Conclusion anywhere from 22% (plus or minus 8%) of stars like our Sun have a planet 1 to 2 times the size of the Earth in the stars habitable zone where liquid water would flow on its surface.

This is amazing.

To review: there are 200 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy.
11 percent of them are stars like our Sun. Or 22,000,000,000 Sunlike stars.
We now can estimate that around 22% of these have planets like the Earth.

That amounts to 440,000,000.

To put that figure into perspective: That is 120,000,000 more Earthlike planets that inhabit our Galaxy than people inhabit the United States (320,000,000 people in the US roughly).



In other words: We probably have a lot of company out there. Some of it likely nearby. (Milky Way Galaxy is only 100,000 light years across).

If you just spread those planets out evenly then that means within 10 light years on average there are 12 Earthlike planets.

Bringing it back to the Hill-Fish Map: Within the space illustrated on the Hill-Fish star map there would be anywhere from 100-600 Earthlike planets in a sphere covering the space the map fits within.

If we guess that only 1 percent of Earthlike planets produce intelligent civilizations then that is somewhere between 1 and 6 intelligent species in Hill-Fish space.

Kepler space telescope finds Earth-size, potentially habitable planets are common

Our Milky Way galaxy alone could harbor tens of billions of rocky worlds where water might be liquid at the surface, according to the report, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and discussed at a news conference in California.

A fifth of all sunlike stars in our galaxy might have habitable planets

If the estimate is correct, the nearest ocean planet might be just 12 light-years away, which, though extremely distant for all practical purposes (such as sending a robotic space probe), is just around the corner in our galactic neighborhood.

Hello Tau Ceti e... 11.8 light years away and on the Hill-Fish map.

Jadestar,

you say the travel routes are consistent with Kepler's discoveries. I wonder if the lack of observatories south of the equator with the exception of HARPS could bias these findings. As to why there seems to be a lack of exoplanets south/east of the map, could that not also be because of the lack of available telescopes? Kepler pointed its lens towards a higher concentration of G-K stars. Is there a lack of said star types south/east of Zeta reticuli?

Your evidence is compelling though, and thank you for refuting the Alpha Centauri model. Without access to a better computer all I could do was rotate maps from Solstation, etc.

Hope Exoplanetsat (sp?) launches more than a dozen, and keep up the phenomenal work!

AngelHeart
Jadestar,

you say the travel routes are consistent with Kepler's discoveries.

Not at all.

Kepler looks in a totally different section of sky than the stars on the Hill-Fish map. What I have said is that the routes are consistent about what we know about other (non-Kepler) extrasolar planets and that the map includes some habitable planets.

I wonder if the lack of observatories south of the equator with the exception of HARPS could bias these findings.

As to why there seems to be a lack of exoplanets south/east of the map, could that not also be because of the lack of available telescopes?

I assume you're talking about the "migration/exploration" vs known exoplanets image I posted. I took that in consideration. There are more than just the HARPS survey taking place in the southern hemisphere.

WASP South survey has turned up a good amount of planets all of which are included, there is the CORALIE spectrograph at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, there's the Eschelle spectrograph at the Anglo-Australian Telescope in Australia, there's the Pan-Pacific Planet Search also in Australia, all of which have also found or confirmed planets around southern hemisphere stars.

There are some others which escape my mind at the moment but the lack of planets in that part of the map is not due to a lack of southern hemisphere searches.

Kepler pointed its lens towards a higher concentration of G-K stars.

Well, like I said Kepler is pointed at a patch of sky not near the map which includes a good statistical representation of the stars in our Galaxy, it's not G-K biased as far as I know.

I included references to Kepler because its mission was to hone in on the fraction of stars with planets like the Earth and the frequency of planets of all types in habitable zones.

Is there a lack of said star types south/east of Zeta reticuli?

Nope. Here are all the G (marked in yellow circles) and K (marked in orange circles) stars:



As you can see there are plenty of stars that way which are G or K.

Here's the overlay of the confirmed exoplanets:



I've done a ton of data overlays with that map by the way. If you have any other ideas you'd like me to try out please let me know and I will give it a shot

Your evidence is compelling though, and thank you for refuting the Alpha Centauri model. Without access to a better computer all I could do was rotate maps from Solstation, etc.

Thanks! It's been time intensive but it's also been fun at times and like I said, there hadn't been a good serious look at the map for awhile so I figured it was a good time since we're now filling in the blanks.

I'm still working on the summary video.

Hope Exoplanetsat (sp?) launches more than a dozen, and keep up the phenomenal work!

edit on 5-11-2013 by AngelHeart because: Claro

edit on 5-11-2013 by AngelHeart because: (no reason given)

Agreed. Also of great interest is TESS (The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). It will look strictly at the nearest stars in a sphere for transits like Kepler. So while Kepler was to make a statistical survey of what likely exists in our Galaxy. TESS will give us a complete picture of our local neighborhood and will include just about all the stars on the Hill-Fish map.




It's already in the late stages of assembly and is stated for a 2017 launch and I am as excited, if not more excited about TESS than I was about Kepler when it launched.

Amazingly I also talked with Sara Seager (exoplanet superstar and creator of the Exoplanetsat concept) in the Kepler Science conference chat today!!!!

I couldn't believe she was just hanging out there. But she was watching some of her students gave presentations.

I was just watching the presentations and going through the slides and I expressed sadness and anger that the Terrestrial Planet Finder and the ESA's Darwin were cancelled and out of nowhere she posted: "A scaled down TPF is under study" and gave me this link:

exep.jpl.nasa.gov...

I can only hope that they are able to make progress there. I'd love to join their ranks when I reach that level (I'm still an undergrad). I have plenty of work to do to get there though!

Is the better barney hill case the first reported abduction and encounter by the grays.

reply to post by 5pooky


It would be interesting to state the date of the Betty Hill's map and the discovery of the star and planet on the probable match (is there only one possible match?)

I think in your text you did not mention the possibility of a moon being "habitable" (note that habitable to life as we know) this can extend the "Goldie Locks Zone" one can also add to that the capability of large gaseous planets to capture stray planets, which we do not have a clue about their number. Even more out there we can add orbital colonies/outposts.

AthlonSavage
Is the better barney hill case the first reported abduction and encounter by the grays.

No.

This is a big misconception. The Hill's description of their abductors were quite a bit different from the stereotypical description of the "greys".

The description from the Hills presented a much more human looking alien than the greys, their eyes were more widely separated than our own but they had fairly human-like features.

Here are some depictions of the "Hill abduction" aliens based on their descriptions and sketches:





Now contrast that with the stereotypical "grey":






Quite a big difference.

I'm pretty sure the Hills also described the height of their abductors as around 4 and a half to 5 feet tall. The greys are described as shorter than this.

From a completely speculative (but rooted a bit in what we know about different stars and planets) standpoint....

The Hill abductors would have come from a planet not much different than our Earth in terms of mass, gravity, atmospheric density and stellar flux from either a G or K star.

The "greys" would have come from a Super Earth type of planet, with higher mass, gravity and atmospheric density than our Earth around an M-Star with a higher than normal Ultraviolet output.

This would explain the short body (higher than Earth gravity), large eyes (due to their M-star being dimmer than our sun) with built in sunglasses apparently (due to the higher UV output of their M-star) and lack of a defined nose (due to higher than Earth atmospheric density).

If the Hill aliens come from an Earthlike planet around one of the stars of Zeta Reticuli then perhaps the "greys" come from Gliese 581 g or Gliese 667 c. (If anyone starts using that to sell a book please send me part of your royalty check lol)

Just some fun speculation based on astrobiology

Panic2k11
reply to post by 5pooky

 

It would be interesting to state the date of the Betty Hill's map and the discovery of the star and planet on the probable match (is there only one possible match?)

Well all of the stars on the Hill-Fish map were known at the time of the alleged abduction. What was not known was whether they had any planets, nor precisely how close they were to each other and in some cases their age was still unknown.

That was back in 1961.

In 2013 we now know that there was a logical reason for the directions indicated on the map. That there are habitable planets around some of the stars on the map and just off the edge of it and we know that the majority of the stars on the map are older than our Sun by at least a billion years, often more.

I think in your text you did not mention the possibility of a moon being "habitable" (note that habitable to life as we know) this can extend the "Goldie Locks Zone" one can also add to that the capability of large gaseous planets to capture stray planets, which we do not have a clue about their number. Even more out there we can add orbital colonies/outposts.

I certainly did mention a moon being habitable. There is a Gas Giant around Upsilon Andromedae (Upsilon Andromedae d) which could have a habitable exomoon.

As yet we have yet to find one Exomoon in our planet searches but this area of study is still very new and instruments and data reduction techniques capable of detecting exomoons only recently became available.

Kepler by the way can in theory detect an exomoon the size of the largest moon in our solar system (Ganymede) and they already have found a planet the size of our smallest planet (Mercury).

So its only a matter of time before an exomoon is discovered and announced.

reply to post by JadeStar


Its possible those dark eyes on the grays are a form of polaroid lens, artificial, lenses whoch need no frame because everything else about the hills aliens is the same as the grays.

AthlonSavage
reply to post by JadeStar

 

Its possible those dark eyes on the grays are a form of polaroid lens, artificial, lenses whoch need no frame.

Anything is possible but I would ask you why that would be probable? Why would they need them at night?

OR, why didn't the Hill aliens need them?

because everything else about the hills aliens is the same as the grays.

I disagree. Everything about the Hill aliens was slightly different. For instance they were supposedly going to let Betty have a "book" until the leader decided against it. This doesn't fit the behavior of the greys in the literature I've read on abductions, at all.

The Hill aliens also had similar hands to human ones, not the types of hands the greys are depicted of having (ie: very long fingers, often with suction cups on the tips).

Lastly there is a difference in height and musculature. I would hesitate to trying to shoe-horn the Hill aliens into the grey stereotype. They looked very little like them if one examines the details Betty and Barney gave about them back in 1961.

reply to post by JadeStar


The lens may have different functions and effects, than polaroid glasses could be optical data in side like computer data.

@AngelHeart - I just remembered another Southern Hemisphere Survey. The HAT-South telescopes are located on three sites around the Southern Hemisphere: at Siding Spring Observatory (Australia), Las Campanas Observatory (Chile), and the Hess Site (Namibia).

They've all found planets as well.

reply to post by tanka418


Interesting post. Setting aside whether the Hill story is a hoax or not, you have factor in if a "grey" could function properly on Earth. Any habitable extrasolar planet would need to have the same and/near gravitational influence as on earth. This is called gravitational biology. Our specific gravity on earth had a direct result in human evolutionary processes. The cells in our bodies, for example, are adapted to 9.78 m/s². This is why we cannot function outside of earth without a spacesuit.

Therefore, any extraterrestrial visiting earth would have to have come from a planet with a similar gravity, in this case 9.78 m/s². If not, they would not be able to function properly on earth. Thus far, astronomers have not found any extrasolar planets orbiting Z1 or Z2 ... let alone an extrasolar planet with a gravity close to 9.78 m/s². This goes for reptilians, Nordics, etc. too.

Great topic guys.