The Hill Star Map and Exoplanets

This was just a short test video I put together to see if I could record from Celestia before I try to do the in depth video I've been referring to. This video illustrates just how small a part of the Galaxy we're talking about when we talk about all the map, exoplanets, SETI, etc. We've barely scratched the surface or peeped out of our room. BTW: that long stream of white circles is in the direction Kepler is pointed.

Oh! Jadestar...

I think I'm in love!

I know you didn't want to post about why this map is the best interpretation rather than the Atwilder map or of...I forget his name, but theorised it was Alpha Centauri A & B in the forground, high metal stars that in theory would reveal why theses sightings appear so frequently in the skies. I would love a short post disputing those theories.

AngelHeart
Oh! Jadestar...

I think I'm in love!

I know you didn't want to post about why this map is the best interpretation rather than the Atwilder map or of...I forget his name, but theorised it was Alpha Centauri A & B in the forground, high metal stars that in theory would reveal why theses sightings appear so frequently in the skies. I would love a short post disputing those theories.

Thanks.

Funny you should mention that because that was where I started my research. I started out to refute the Fish interpretation, primarily because to me the three stars seemed to be Alpha Centauri A and B and the much smaller Proxima Centauri.

So I naturally looked for any research along those lines to avoid duplicating work already done and poured over other interpretations among them Dr Attenberg's interpretation that the base stars were Epsilon Eridani, Epsilon Indi and Tau Ceti due to the available, but very limited amount of information we had about them at the time which was metallicity. It was theorized that stars with high metallicity would be more likely to have planets.

Here was Dr. Attenberg's interpretation:



The theory that high metallicity correlates with the likelihood of planets was proven somewhat true as the chart below illustrates: (0.0 represents the our Sun's metallicity).




However as you can see, the correlation is no where near as close as was thought in the 1970s when Attenberg did his work. We've found plenty of planets around stars with lower metallicity than the Sun, even some in Habitable Zones. The universe just likes to produce planets it seems. Especially small ones.

Also by today's standards we know some of the stars on Attenberg's interpretation are not as enticing as they once seemed, for various reasons. Meanwhile the Fish interpretation seems to hold up.

I also looked at the interpretation of a "Yari Danjo" who I am not even sure exists. They claimed to have a Ph. D. but I find no peer reviewed work for them, nor can I find where they got their Ph.D. and their whole interpretation is full of problems.

First, they had a very poor understanding of astrometry (calling it Astro-Metry for starters) and the stars on their Alpha Centauri centered interpretation are even worse picks than Attenbergs. It's obvious when you see stars like UV Ceti which is a pretty active flare star and likely hostile to life or stars like Sirius, Procyon, or 61 Cygni all of which either are too massive and young (Sirius, Procyon, etc) or with no stable habitable zone (61 Cygni). "Dr. Danjo" likely picked these stars because they were relatively close in distance to the Sun and are listed in a lot of popular literature.

The death nail is they invoke a fictional star called "Vulcan" which they propose is binary of our Sun. (Niburu anyone ). If the Sun had a binary the WISE survey would have found it.



I must stress again that no one who has evaluated the Hill map put as much work into various models as Marjorie Fish who as I remember, built 12 3D models in her apartment before she found a close match which has stood the test of time as new information about many of the stars on the map and in some cases the planets they host comes in.

That's why I don't bother with alternative interpretations of the map at this point. Most of them are either outdated (Attenberg) or junk 'science' (Danjo). Or simply laughable, Koch-Kyborg Map (planets and asteroids in our solar system), Hill-Wilson Star Map (stars as seen from the earth - to sell a book).

I myself am a bit of a skeptic on the subject of UFOs being mostly alien in origin (though I will concede a tiny, tiny fraction of reports probably are).

I set out to poke holes in the Fish interpretation and was surprised to see how well it held up. As such, it's now had the opposite effect on me. But that's how science should work. Sometimes the thing you seek is not the thing you find but even more amazing! My pet theory (that it was Alpha Centauri, not Zeta Reticuli) fell to pieces when I re-oriented the map every which way in 3D in Celestia using the 2 million star catalog and a list of all known brown dwarfs.

This lead me back to Fish's interpretation, which I now readily accept was mostly correct.

If anything, this has served to make me consider the whole UFO phenomena from a skeptical but open minded point of view with an eye towards stuff that can be tested scientifically.

On a personal note, Marjorie Fish passed away this past July and I feel she was a pioneer in this field of connecting hard science with UFOlogy in the same way as Dr James McDonald, Dr. J Allen Hynek and Dr Jacques Valle. Hopefully history will remember her that way.

I'll do my part to help that along if this all turns out to be true (which is looking more likely year to year).

JadeStar

Interesting. You should go through the Celestia code over on Sourceforge. I'm pretty sure what you need is there since they basically already did what you're trying to do (out to a much greater distance) but they do not have a web interface. So perhaps all you have to do is create a Java version of Celestia?


sourceforge.net...

Yep, I know about sourceforge...use them frequently when I'm pressed for time.

There is an advantage to being an ageing software engineer; ya don't need to go to other sources for solutions to many things. In this case, most of what I need already existed in my archives. (I've written literally millions of line in my 40 year career) And, I have two star databases; one is a small collection of some 2525 stars, along with many of their properties (it is a bit old ...2007), and another that had something on the order of 10,000. I use the smaller database because it is better organized (astronomers should leave database architecture to "Data" professionals )

The only serious issue my wee project currently has is "names", more specifically "proper names" and/or a common designation...not all of that data is complete in my database (I only have about 875 or so actual names), so I may have a bit of work and research ahead...

Y'all happen to know where I can find a "CSV" file (excel) with names and positions?

Nice start on the video...

tanka418


The only serious issue my wee project currently has is "names", more specifically "proper names" and/or a common designation...not all of that data is complete in my database (I only have about 875 or so actual names), so I may have a bit of work and research ahead...

Y'all happen to know where I can find a "CSV" file (excel) with names and positions?

Nice start on the video...

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When you say proper names do you mean names like "Groombridge 34", "Barnard's Star", Proxima, etc? Or do you mean their catalog (Gliese, Henry-Draper, Hipparcos, SAO, etc) name?

A lot of the nearby stars do not have the former so you'll have to settle on which catalog you want to use.

(Personally I feel every star should have a proper name or at least there should be a harmonization of all catalog names into one uniform catalog but the IAU disagrees ).

JadeStar

When you say proper names do you mean names like "Groombridge 34", "Barnard's Star", Proxima, etc? Or do you mean their catalog (Gliese, Henry-Draper, Hipparcos, SAO, etc) name?

A lot of the nearby stars do not have the former so you'll have to settle on which catalog you want to use.

(Personally I feel every star should have a proper name or at least there should be a harmonization of all catalog names into one uniform catalog but the IAU disagrees

).

Mostly "common/friendly" names, I do seem to have some sort of "Catalog name" table with all the appropriate names, unfortunately, most of those are unrecognizable to most folk, would like the friendly names, and of course will use the 800 or so that I have when possible. And... I guess catalog designation where friendly is there.

It appears that I do have catalog designations for all of my smaller table, though there are some 123 different catalogs referenced in the data...so I'll stick to what seems to be the "most common" catalog where possible (likely the Gliese catalog).

tanka418

JadeStar

When you say proper names do you mean names like "Groombridge 34", "Barnard's Star", Proxima, etc? Or do you mean their catalog (Gliese, Henry-Draper, Hipparcos, SAO, etc) name?

A lot of the nearby stars do not have the former so you'll have to settle on which catalog you want to use.

(Personally I feel every star should have a proper name or at least there should be a harmonization of all catalog names into one uniform catalog but the IAU disagrees

).

Mostly "common/friendly" names, I do seem to have some sort of "Catalog name" table with all the appropriate names, unfortunately, most of those are unrecognizable to most folk, would like the friendly names, and of course will use the 800 or so that I have when possible. And... I guess catalog designation where friendly is there.

It appears that I do have catalog designations for all of my smaller table, though there are some 123 different catalogs referenced in the data...so I'll stick to what seems to be the "most common" catalog where possible (likely the Gliese catalog).

Yes, Gliese and HD are the way to go but HIP (Hipparcos) seems to be a good idea as its mission was precise positions and distances of all the nearby stars.

As for friendly names, my suggestion is to look into alternative names (Arabic, Chinese and Indian Vedic) for some of the stars without English or Greek names if they have them.

Here's a resource for the Vedic names www.astronomy.pomona.edu...

I am not sure on first glance what stars those correspond to. I suspect they will just be ones with English or Greek names already since they are likely the brighter stars but there were a couple that had numerical designations. ie: Aries g 92680 being a star called Ashwini.

And there is the conundrum. The dimmer stars were ones that we either didn't see or couldn't see until the advent of telescopes so they are unlikely to have proper names but rather catalog numbers.

Which is fine. I don't think the catalog numbers mixed in with standard names is going to be too confusing for the nearest stars.

Here are some links that you may have already checked out:

en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...
en.wikipedia.org...

The Allen Telescope array has been out of operation since July, with persistent technical troubles. Before that they were mainly looking at stars with known planets, mostly in the Kepler Field. They were also doing some work on an area survey of the denser parts of our galaxy, toward the center.

Ross 54
The Allen Telescope array has been out of operation since July, with persistent technical troubles. Before that they were mainly looking at stars with known planets, mostly in the Kepler Field. They were also doing some work on an area survey of the denser parts of our galaxy, toward the center.

Thanks. I still wish they published their observation lists though. I do have the entire HabCat database (which they use since Jill Tarter put it together) but it would be nice to know which stars from it they routinely target.

i found a list of the ATA Kepler field targets at the SETI Live site. Click on 'targets' icon at top of the page. setilive.org... 394 pages with 12 stars per page= 4728 stars.

Ross 54
i found a list of the ATA Kepler field targets at the SETI Live site. Click on 'targets' icon at top of the page. setilive.org... 394 pages with 12 stars per page= 4728 stars.

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You rule! Thank you!

We will be discussing this awesome thread on ATS live! tonight.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by zazzafrazz


Hi, Zazzzyyyy. I wonder if we could get JadeStar to come on the ATS Live show tonight to discuss her research?

reply to post by _BoneZ_


howdy bonez we'd love jadestar to join the segment if she can

zazzafrazz
howdy bonez we'd love jadestar to join the segment if she can

That also includes any other members who have contributed to this thread. If you would like to be on the ATS Live show tonight, you can call in during the first hour of the show when it's broadcasting. The number and other info are in the link above that Zazz posted.

I do not believe the hills because they only remembered the abduction after hypnosis and I don't believe in hypnosis. From personal experience I say meeting an alien is unforgettable. Read any book you want on hypnosis you will never be able to get someone into a magical trance.

mattsawaufo
I do not believe the hills because they only remembered the abduction after hypnosis

They remembered the craft and the incident, but when it came to the abduction, their memories became incomplete and fragmented. That's where the hypnosis came in.

Then there's the star map, many of the stars not being visible to the naked eye, and several not even known to the general public until several years later. There's no possible way anyone could know about those stars unless they were shown a star map.

mattsawaufo
and I don't believe in hypnosis.

Penn State psychology professor William Ray has said:

"In the 1950s, reliable measures of hypnotizability were developed, which allowed this research field to gain validity. We've seen more than 6,000 articles on hypnosis published since then in medical and psychological journals. Today, there's general agreement that hypnosis can be an important part of treatment for some conditions, including phobias, addictions and chronic pain."


I, personally, don't think I could ever be hypnotized, but it is a documented and accepted medical procedure that does get results.

mattsawaufo
From personal experience I say meeting an alien is unforgettable.

Unless those aliens posses the technology to wipe one's memory, or somehow make one forget what happened. Which would be the case here, and in many other reported abductions.

mattsawaufo
I do not believe the hills because they only remembered the abduction after hypnosis and I don't believe in hypnosis. From personal experience I say meeting an alien is unforgettable. Read any book you want on hypnosis you will never be able to get someone into a magical trance.

I guess you can not believe in the hypnosis part, but I think you can have rather high confidence in the map. From the work that JadeStar and I have posted it would seem the map is real. That seriously increases the probability of the whole story being real.

Guys, I'm seriously flattered you wanted me to come on the show tonight, I was out though. I am thrilled to hear you discussed my research on ATS Live too! I am just listening to it now. Love the new intro music! Though I am a bit of a metalhead I listen to jazz and classical when I am working on research like this or papers for college.

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.