On August 17, I wrote about a possible comet that I had “found” and had reported to the Harvard Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT). For several days I patiently awaited the knock on the door. Perhaps even a medal struck in my honor, but it was not to be.
Science is as much about saying what a thing isn’t, as it is about saying what a thing is. It’s not just about saying you’re right; it’s also about saying you’re wrong.* And I have to say I was wrong. Although I do not say it with chagrin or shame (a modicum of embarrassment perhaps) as I believe I accurately described the object I saw in the night sky. But if nothing else a comet moves, and my object did not.
I can still see it faint and fuzzy in basically the same location when I look for it with my binoculars. When I first saw it I was exploring the constellation Lyra. I also knew that the famed Ring Nebula was close by. Actually, I had been looking for the Ring Nebula when I first spotted the fuzzy object. All my charts showed the Ring Nebula, Messier-57, on the line between Lyra-beta and Lyra-gamma at the base of the lyre. The object that I saw seemed well above this line. Perhaps I had mistaken two different stars, Lyra-lambda and Lyra-Nu, as the base of the lyre. This would place M-57 above the line that would connect those two stars. That would place it in about the position that I first saw the fuzzy object. But lambda and nu are also considerably less bight with a lower magnitude than the stars that form the true base of the lyre. This would have been a difference that I believe I would have noticed.
The object is still there. I can resolve it (barely) with my binoculars. It looks the same – faint and fuzzy. But it is not moving. I will try to find a better optical instrument for viewing it. I will check other and perhaps more detailed star charts. If it is the Ring Nebula, which I now suspect, then with a better optical device I hope to be able to resolve the object into the beautiful ring shape created by the transformation of a star. The nebula was formed when a red giant star passing through the last stages in its evolution explosively cast off its outer layers. It is now collapsing into a white dwarf.
And I can continue to wait for the telegram from CBAT. I have to laugh, but at the same time I feel a certain level of embarrassment for a comet this is likely not.
I will go outside and observe the object again tonight. The moon does not rise too soon to interfere by flooding the humid, late summer sky with light. I will try out my old and fairly trusty telescope – as soon as I fix its tripod.
And now I have a story to tell, and a question to answer. What is that object that I see?
* In his November 2012 blog post to Scientific American, Steven Pomeroy speaks to the rightness of being wrong. He relates what Richard Feynman said on the subject; “”If it disagrees with experiment (note: in the instance of my observed object if it does not fit the parameters of a comet), it’s wrong. In that simple statement, is the key to science.”