The Hill Star Map and Exoplanets

reply to post by JadeStar


Absolutely fascinating posts. Thanks for your contribution. Looking forward to reading more!

JadeStar
If a mod can let me know its ok to post this as its own new thread I will

You have a private message. Upper right corner you'll see buttons for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. You'll also see an envelope. Inside that envelope are your private messages, and when it's lit up, you have new ones.

To stray off the topic for just a moment-- It was indicated in a recent post that Nicola Tesla was the inventor of the superheterodyne radio receiver, a radio technology staple of the 20th century. In fact, is was Edwin Howard Armstrong who invented this system, as well as the frequency modulation (FM) system for both transmitters and receivers.
I found interesting the speculation about reports of small-statured extraterrestrials. It was suggested that this could signify their origin on large, 'super-Earth' planets. With stronger gravity than we have on Earth, such planets might well produce relatively short humanoids, but with comparatively stout or sturdy physiques. A problem here is that most of the short ETs are said to be gracile, thin, or lightly constructed. This would suggest their origin on worlds with less than terrestrial gravity.
There are several other possible explanations for short stature. These range from natural adaptation to a particular environment, possibly one with environmental limitations, to genetic engineering for some unknown purpose.
As small, red M class stars have become recognized as promising abodes for life, we might consider these in this context. As quite small stars, they seem likely to produce, on average, relatively small planets, with comparatively weak gravity.
We also have numerous descriptions of extraterrestrials with conspicuously large eyes. These could be a good adaptation to the limited, long wavelength light on a tidally locked planet of a red dwarf star.
It seems probable that the most temperate environments on such planets would be in twilight, in a band midway between the the brightest and darkest points on the planet. These, in a planet that keeps the same side facing the sun at all times, are permanently fixed points on the planet's surface.

JadeStar
As you can see habitable planets larger than the Earth but smaller than the large planets of our own solar system seem to be more plentiful than planets like the Earth.

You must take into account that larger planets are far easier to detect than small ones. I speculate that for every super sized terrestrial there must be many more regular sized and smaller ones.

Yes, and past experience has shown that smaller objects tend to outnumber larger ones in the universe. It is not unreasonable to suspect that comparatively small planets may be in the majority. Once we've done enough observing, and used good enough technology, the biases toward larger planets may be overcome.

Ross 54
A problem here is that most of the short ETs are said to be gracile, thin, or lightly constructed. This would suggest their origin on worlds with less than terrestrial gravity.

As small, red M class stars have become recognized as promising abodes for life, we might consider these in this context. As quite small stars, they seem likely to produce, on average, relatively small planets, with comparatively weak gravity.

We also have numerous descriptions of extraterrestrials with conspicuously large eyes. These could be a good adaptation to the limited, long wavelength light on a tidally locked planet of a red dwarf star.

I could not agree more. And if it is true that the greys come from such a world, I bet they hate that on Earth they are so heavy and the Sun is so bright. I bet their skin would sunburn like a redhead's.

Here is a 3d view based on the Hill map. It is from around 70 ly in the direction of Gliese 59.1



It seems that about 1/3 of the stars aren't quite where they should be; so there's probably some misidentification here.

It also appears that part of the original map is rotated around 90 degrees; Gliese 59.1, Tau(1) Eridani, and Ka. Fornacis.

And of course Zeta 1 and 2 appear as nearly the same star in this view.

Its kind of interesting; all but 2 or 3 are "G" class stars, all are over 3 billion years, typically less than 6 billion.

This image is taken from a 3D model of the stars built with Poser Pro(09). X, Y, Z coordinates computed from values in isbn star database using custom software (source available).

Sources:
star data: www.astrostudio.org...
Star positions: ISBN star database (this is a star catalog that seems current and reasonabley extensive that was in the right format for importing into SQL Server. Although it is composed of many tables and requires a bit of skill in the "SQL" language.)

Galileo400

Ross 54
A problem here is that most of the short ETs are said to be gracile, thin, or lightly constructed. This would suggest their origin on worlds with less than terrestrial gravity.

As small, red M class stars have become recognized as promising abodes for life, we might consider these in this context. As quite small stars, they seem likely to produce, on average, relatively small planets, with comparatively weak gravity.

We also have numerous descriptions of extraterrestrials with conspicuously large eyes. These could be a good adaptation to the limited, long wavelength light on a tidally locked planet of a red dwarf star.

I could not agree more. And if it is true that the greys come from such a world, I bet they hate that on Earth they are so heavy and the Sun is so bright. I bet their skin would sunburn like a redhead's.

Actually; it is highly improbable that advanced sentient life would evolve around a class "M" star, even the bright ones.

It is a far better bet that these large eyed people from Reticuli are from a "G" class star. Its actually pretty easy to evolve in a "reduced" light environment even near a "G" star.

tanka418

Galileo400

Ross 54
A problem here is that most of the short ETs are said to be gracile, thin, or lightly constructed. This would suggest their origin on worlds with less than terrestrial gravity.

As small, red M class stars have become recognized as promising abodes for life, we might consider these in this context. As quite small stars, they seem likely to produce, on average, relatively small planets, with comparatively weak gravity.

We also have numerous descriptions of extraterrestrials with conspicuously large eyes. These could be a good adaptation to the limited, long wavelength light on a tidally locked planet of a red dwarf star.

I could not agree more. And if it is true that the greys come from such a world, I bet they hate that on Earth they are so heavy and the Sun is so bright. I bet their skin would sunburn like a redhead's.

Actually; it is highly improbable that advanced sentient life would evolve around a class "M" star, even the bright ones.

It is a far better bet that these large eyed people from Reticuli are from a "G" class star. Its actually pretty easy to evolve in a "reduced" light environment even near a "G" star.

You may be correct about the general superiority of planets of Sun-like stars as abodes of sentient life. We know too little about such matters to say anything in more than speculative terms. And, yes, I agree that a planet brightly lit by a G class star could still have low light environments-- jungles, dense forests, and perpetually overcast skies all being possibilities.

I am sorry, I do NOT believe in the Betty Hill Starmap and also otherwise have some doubts about the entire Hill case.

Betty was NOT (not in the slightest) the type of sharply observing witness who would be able to reproduce a starmap in detail from memory. In fact I think that probably only very, very few people would be able to do so.

Betty was a very biased witness which later on (years after the incident) couldn't even identify and discern street-lights from UFOs and sometimes even got very simple and basic things wrong.

I think it was the second book about the case, "Captured!" by S. Friedman where he even hinted multiple time what a "bad witness" Betty really was when it came to describing technical and often rather simple things. I don't buy that she was able to re-create a 100% accurate starmap from memory.

Ross 54
You may be correct about the general superiority of planets of Sun-like stars as abodes of sentient life. We know too little about such matters to say anything in more than speculative terms. And, yes, I agree that a planet brightly lit by a G class star could still have low light environments-- jungles, dense forests, and perpetually overcast skies all being possibilities.

Actually, without any speculation at all; I can say, without fear of contradiction, that a class "G2" star 4.5 billion years old can support advanced sentient space-faring life. I/we have found such a planet near by; the inhabitants of the planet call it "Earth".

It therefore becomes much more reasonable to think that stars like Zeta Reticuli (either of them) can support life not unlike what we find here. The same goes for Tau Ceti, 82 Eridani, and many others, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

reply to post by NoRulesAllowed


use google image and find the original Hill starmap. Compare it to the image I just posted.


It doesn't matter how "technical" she was or how difficult it is to remember a star configuration; the fact remains she produced that "map"...her map has about a 7% error (one star is out of place).

There is a scale problem with the Fish interpretation of the Betty Hill star map. The distance between Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli seems to be very much exaggerated, with respect to most of the rest of the map. The distance between the latter and Gliese 86 also seems to be magnified, though not nearly as much. The distance between Zeta 2 Reticuli and our Sun seems to be minimized. The proportions of the rest of the map appear reasonably close to consistent, considering that it was claimed to have been drawn from memory, five years after it was reportedly seen.

Can these errors in proportion be ascribed to the limitations of Betty Hill's memory? It seems unlikely that she couldn't have recalled that the two largest stars on the map should be touching, if not overlapping. It also seems that the unusually long direct route from Zeta 2 Reticuli to our Sun wouldn't have shrunk so much in her memory.

It may be that the map was not intended to have a consistant scale. Those who are familiar with maps will recall the concept of the inset. This can be a map on a larger scale within a map with a smaller one. It is intended to show details of an area of interest. An inset can also be of the same scale as the main map, but shorten the distance between two areas of interest. If those who drew the map are from the Zeta Reticuli system, one can understand their emphasis on this region of space.
The space between Zeta Reticuli 2 and our Sun seems to have been shortened. The reason for this may have been to make our Sun conveniently visible within a field of a given size. Since their current voyage was supposedly between Zeta 2 Reticuli and our Sun, there seems to be a certain sense and aptness in this representation.

reply to post by Ross 54


Yes, there are scale issues with the original as with mine. In mine for instance; the star size is greatly exaggerated (there is actually some 30 or so AU between them (if memory serves)). Though the distances represented in my version are accurate.

There is also a portion of the map that seems to be on its own plane, and rotated.

It kind of strikes me as "informative art" rather than an actual navigation chart.

reply to post by tanka418


The position of Polaris, the orion belt and some others were also a bit different in Ancient times, like what was on the top what was below. If she were given an old view of the stars, it is possible to have been different, thus the inaccuracy. Provided that such an encounter really happened..

Found this image, which gives an idea of the three dimensional space occupied by the group of stars selected by Marjorie Fish as most closely resembling the Betty Hill star map. www.ufoconspiracy.com/images/zbetty.gif
They seem to have gone a long trip (37 light years), without any stops along the way, to visit Earth. A longer voyage, by far, than to any other single star. Perhaps we should feel flattered.

Apologies, this weekend got away from me and I didn't get to put as much time in on this as I thought I would. Nevertheless I promised a post before Monday (it's still 15 mins from Monday where I live! ) so I thought I'd give another quick primer into habitable zones, terrestrial planet classes (the kind we're interested in) before I start to work through the stars on the Hill-Fish Map with those things in mind.

So….

Basically earlier in the thread I went into the differences in classes of stars and their life expectancies and evolution:



Now you'll see why.

Habitable Zones

A habitable zone is the place where a plane or moon of a planet would be neither too hot nor too cold for life as we know it:




Different classes of stars have different size circumstellar habitable zones (or habitable zones, CHZ or HZ for short),.These habitable zones vary in terms of the distance from their star depending on whether the star is hotter or colder than our Sun. As you can see illustrated here:






For an explanation of the math that determines this, please go here: albertzotkin.wordpress.com...


Planetary Classification

Just as stars have different classes, so do planets. The Planetary Habitability Laboratory at Arecibo has created classification system for habitable worlds depending on where in their star's habitable zone they exist in. which will be illustrated below:


Habitable worlds like our Earth are called M-Class planets (yep, just like Star Trek!). The M stands for mesoplanet. There are also Class hP and Class P (hypopsychroplanets and psychroplanets) worlds which would be slightly cooler than our Earth and Class T and Class hT (themoplanets and hyperthermoplanets) worlds slightly steamier than the earth.




Here's a comparison of some known worlds on the habitable planet classification scale:


Here are some more nearby worlds which could be more or less like the Earth:



One thing to keep in mind through all this as we look at the Hill-Fish map is the age of the star in which the planets orbit. Life on Earth took 4.5 billion years before we existed to ponder life out there. So planets around stars as old as the sun or older are very interesting because life would presumably have had more time to evolve into intelligent and perhaps technological beings. A star older than our Sun with habitable planets could have technological civilizations not simply 1,000 years or 10,000 or even a million years more advanced but potentially billions of years more advanced than we are.

For these reasons I made the comparison to us being perhaps the baby in the crib inside the house. The answer to the "Fermi Paradox" may not be that we're a zoo, but rather a nursery.

So lets go on to examine each star on the Hill-Fish map individually. I can't do them all in this post but others will follow and eventually I'll have a cool video tour of these stars and some others which lay in direct lines off of the edge of the map from what looks to be the alien "main line". Some of these off-the-map stars are as interesting as ones on it.


I borrowed the formatting from someone named SpookyVince who analyzed the Hill-Fish map in a 2009 post. I left his notes intact in Italicst but added my own after them. It seemed like a good format so why re-invent the wheel? I of course decided to add some helpful information about each start (Class, Age, Distance from the Sun, Distance from Zeta Reticuli. Planets (if available). You will find my updated notes as of 2013 under "Additional Notes:" In some cases I updated the Reference link as well.

Lets start with the star closest to the Earth, the Sun. Why? For comparison's sake it helps to establish a baseline of what we're evaluating. So without further adieu….


Sun
Reference
Class: G2V
Age: 4.5 Billion Years
Distance from Earth: 8 light-minutes
Distance from Zeta Ret: 39.16 light-years
Planets: 8 (4 Terrestrial, 4 Gas Giant)
Companions: (none)
Debris Disk(s): 2 (One 30-50 AU from primary star consisting of icey minor planets beyond outermost Gas Giant Neptune the other between 2-3.3 AU from primary star consisting of rocky minor planets and other debris)
Metallicity: 1.0

The star around which the Earth revolves, and the gravitational center of the Solar System. The Sun is a solitary, yellow dwarf star of spectral type G2 (see G star) that has been on the main sequence for about 4.6 billion years. It will remain a main sequence star for another 5.4 billion years.


Now moving from left to tight on the above map:


Gliese 67 A, B
Reference
Class: G1.5V (For A) M1V (For B) (A is a little hotter than our Sun, B is a LOT cooler than our Sun)
Age: 7 Billion Years
Distance from Earth: 42 light-years
Distance from Zeta Ret: 64.9 light-years
Planets: (none discovered yet)
Companions: Gliese 67 B (between 4.2-10.5 AU in elliptical orbit around A)
Debris Disks: none
Metallicity: A: 1.58 (slightly more metal than our Sun)

2009 Post: A nearby Sun-like star in the constellation Andromeda regarded as a promising candidate for habitability if it possesses any Earth-like planets within its habitable zone. It ranks in the top five stars most likely to support life in a shortlist drawn up in 2006 by astrobiologist Margaret Turnbull, one of the authors of HabCat (Catalog of Nearby Habitable Systems).]/i]

Additional notes: Once thought to be a single star, it is now known that Gliese 67 is actually a yellow G-star like our Sun and a smaller M-class red dwarf 30 percent the mass of our Sun. Being a double or binary star does not rule out planets in a habitable zone however:

The presence of a moderately close companion could disrupt the orbit of a hypothetical planet in HD 10307's habitable zone. However, the uncertainty of the orbital parameters makes it equally uncertain exactly where stable orbits would be in this system.

Recently we've discovered a planet orbiting a similar configuration of stars. It's been referred to in the media as "a real life Tatoine" - www.space.com... - These planets are called circumbinary and they may not be that rare: www.popularmechanics.com...

Also of note is that the Gliese 67 star system was the target of a deliberate attempt to contact extraterrestrial intelligence in 2003 as part of a commercial message sent into space called "Cosmic Call 2" - en.wikipedia.org...

It was transmitted from Eurasia's largest radar, 70-meter Eupatoria Planetary Radar. The message was named Cosmic Call 2, it was sent on July 6, 2003, and it will arrive at HD 10307 in September 2044.

By the time that radio message arrives we will likely have a pretty good idea of what type of planets exist around the system, if any.

Continued in my next post.

edit on 27-10-2013 by JadeStar because: (no reason given)