Mike Brown's Planets: Orcus

Showing posts with label Orcus. Show all posts

Baby Pictures

Last night, for the second time this decade, I got to have dinner and give a talk on the floor of the dome of the famous 200-inch Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory. It’s rare for anyone to give a talk on the floor of the 200-inch telescope, because Palomar, like every other large telescope around the planet, is used night after night after night looking at everything from the nearest asteroids to the edge of the universe. Few or no pauses are allowed for frivolities such as dinners and talks (in this case we got in, had dinner, gave a talk, and vacated the floor just as the sun was setting). So it was a treat when I got invited to speak to an intimate gathering of supporters of Palomar and Caltech – the university where I work and the one which, not incidentally, owns and operates Palomar – on the floor of the dome. It was even more of a treat because I had been the speaker at the last one of these dinner 8 ½ years ago, and it was particularly interesting to reminisce about what had happened in the almost-decade since then.

When I gave that first talk, in September of 2000, I was a young assistant professor at Caltech who had embarked on what I think it is fair to say was an audacious project: I was going to go find the 10^th planet. I had spent the previous two years systematically scanning a wide swath of sky using the seemingly ancient technology of manually slapping giant glass photographic plates to the back of a wide-field telescope, exposing the photographic plates to the sky for half an hour at a time, developing the photographic plates in the darkroom downstairs, and then looking at repeat exposures of the same patch of the sky to see if – perhaps! – I could find something that had moved. It was exactly what Clyde Tombaugh had done 70 years earlier that had led to the discovery of Pluto, but, no, I had the advantage of a much larger telescope and the use of computers to help analyze the final photographic plates.

At the time of the talk 8 ½ years ago I was in the third year of the project, where I was going back with a larger telescope to try to confirm anything that I thought I had detected during the first two years with the photographic survey. I told my audience sitting under the 200-inch telescope about what I was doing and about what I hoped to find. I told them about photographic technology versus the new digital cameras now widely in use. I told them about why I thought that after this third year I was going to have made that discovery I was hoping for and the 10^th planet would be in our grasp. It was, I daresay, a talk full of exciting promise.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t asked to give a follow up talk right away.

By the following year it was clear that my three year survey had found a grand total of absolutely nothing.

I told that story last night at the 200-inch telescope and everyone chuckled. They chuckled, of course, only because they knew what came in the years that followed. What came next? We scraped the photographic plates, installed experimental digital cameras, roboticized the telescope, and kept scanning and scanning and scanning. With the benefit of the faster and more sensitive digital cameras we slowly surveyed the whole northern sky and blew the outer solar system open.

Last night I showed my baby pictures from the past decade. I showed Quaoar, the first large Kuiper belt object that we found, the one named for the creation force of the local Tongva Native American tribe, the harbinger of larger objects to come. I showed Orcus with its newly named moon Vanth, and talked about its odd mirror-image orbit to Pluto. I showed Sedna, far beyond the Kuiper belt, in an orbit that takes 12,000 years to go around the sun, named for the frigid Inuit goddess of the sea, a beacon pulling us even further in the distant solar system. I showed Haumea, with her two moons Hi’iiaka and Namaka, spinning her was across the sky, I showed lonely Makemake, bird god of the Rapa Nui, the runt of the litter that produced the Big Three of Makemake, Pluto, and Eris. And then, of course, I showed Eris her, in all of her discord and strife, with her tiny moon Dysnomia circling her.

I really do feel like each one of these is like a child to me. And, like children, whenever the rest of them are not in the room, I will secretly tell you that this one is my favorite. They’re all my favorites. I can tell you stories about their little quirks, their odd habits, and a funny thing that this one did the other day when it thought no one was watching (did you know that the night before Namaka went right behind Haumea playing a little hide-and-seek with us? Silly little moon.).

Something else was particularly interesting to me about my talk 8 ½ years ago at Palomar. Something happened that day that I am certain I will never forget. I was inside the telescope waiting for the group of Caltech supporters to arrive, and finally hearing the knock on the outside door, I opened the door, and, as my eyes adjusted to the blinding outside light, I was greeted by the director of the group of Caltech supporters. She had worked on the Caltech campus for years, but somehow our paths had never crossed. I had certainly never seen her before. How do I know for sure -- you might ask. Trust me -- is my answer. I would have remembered. She walked in the door, and I fumbled my words introducing myself. Her name was Diane Binney.

Diane Binney doesn’t work at Caltech anymore, but she came on the trip to Palomar last night anyway. It was her first time back to the mountain since that time 8 ½ years ago when I gave a talk up there. She came to see old friends and revisit old places. And, since she hadn’t seen many of the people in a long time, she brought baby pictures of her own. She has a 3 ½ year old daughter named Lilah. Lilah has Diane’s last name as a middle name, but she gets the last name from her father. Me. Lilah Binney Brown.

Orcus Porcus

No, that’s not going to be the name for the satellite of Orcus. But it was suggested a surprising number of times, and it did make me laugh every time I read it.

When I decided, on a whim, to throw open the naming of the moon of Orcus, I thought I’d get a few suggestions here and there and make a quick decision. More than 1000 suggestions later I’m a bit overwhelmed and thoroughly torn. There were good names, silly names, scholarly names, names of people’s pets and wives and girlfriends (never husbands or boyfriends, though, which is interesting). Names came from came – not surprisingly – from Etruscan mythology, but also Norse, Aztec, Greek, Hindu, and many more. There were references to current media in all forms, there was word play, and there were made up names that simply sounded good (or at least someone thought they sounded good).

After sorting through all of the suggestions, as few interesting names/themes stand out.

First, many attempts were made to fit in to the Etruscan origins of Orcus itself. I will admit that these always had the inside track in my mind. We’ll get back to this in a minute, but first, some of the more popular names and themes that I had not originally anticipated:

Disney-related. With Orcus being described as the anti-Pluto there was some sentiment to pull in Disney mythology instead of Etruscan mythology. I’m not opposed to the general idea of moving beyond ancient mythology, so I thought about these. But the problem with all of these names, I felt, was that there was no connection to Orcus, only to Pluto.

Dungeons and Dragons related. Unbeknownst to me, Orcus has been a major figure in the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons for the past 30 years. To be fair, though, the phrase “unbeknownst to me” is not exactly true. It really should be “unremembered by me.” My father bought one of the original Dungeons & Dragons sets for my brother and I back in 1976 as a way of keeping his nerdy science fiction loving boys occupied during weekend visits. I will admit to having been an avid player throughout high school. It was a great outlet for a nerdy science fiction loving boy. And though I haven’t thought about it in nearly 30 years, I got sudden senses of nostalgia from all of the D&D related suggestions. I thought of those first few times sitting with my brother and my father (my sister thought we were all crazy) in his apartment trying to figure this stuff out.

But, but, but… Could I really give a name that will stick around for years (hundreds of years? thousands of years? I have no idea) based on a fantasy game that has only been around for thirty years? Would astronomers in 200 years look back on a name like that and think it was a quaint anachronism or just kind of dorky? Maybe. The connections to Orcus are good, even if the mythology is recent.

Tokien related. Many people noted that the word “Orc”, the foot-soldier bad guys from Lord of the Rings, is said to be derived from Orcus (possibly by way of Beowulf) and suggested related names. I should have the same flash backs to nerdy-science-fiction childhood for these suggestions, but I don’t, and I suddenly realized why. Those flashbacks memories seem to keep being overrun by replaced mental images of Elijah Wood and friends running around New Zealand.

There is the same concern about ephemeral popular culture, though these days Orcs are pretty mainstream. But, still, the connection is to the potential origin of the word Orc, as opposed to being to Orcus himself. Somehow, again, that seems not quite right to me.

Silly related. Perhaps the biggest laugh I had when reading these came from someone suggesting “Mindy.” Mindy, of course, was the counterpart to Robin Williams’ Mork. Who was from Ork. The other surprisingly common silly suggestion was “Fiona.” As in, Fiona, bride of Shreck. Shreck, of course, is an Ogre. And then there was – frequently! – “otulP” as in Pluto, backwards. Surprisingly, the more appropriate “norahC’ as in Charon, backwards, rarely showed up.

Un related. People, don’t even start with me. Colbert? Seriously? When people were talking about my discovery of Eris did Stephen Colbert have me on his show? No, he did not. He instead had Neil Tyson. When Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet did Stephen Colbert have me on his show? No, he did not. He instead had Neil Tyson. When Neil Tyson wrote a book about the demotion of Pluto did Stephen Colbert have me on his show? No, he did not. He instead had, well he had Neil Tyson. People, I have this to say: Stephen Colbert is dead to me. And I don’t mean “dead” in a “now-that-he’s-dead-and-in-Hades-hanging-out-with-Orcus-I-can-name-the-satellite-after-him” sort of way, either.

Whale related. Orcus sounds an awful lot like Orcas, as in the “killer whales.” The name Shamu was a shoe-in here, but I liked better the names of the real-life Shamu’s real-life children. Someone even suggested that the name be related to Orcas Island, the largest of the San Juan Island off of the coast of Seattle. It is a well kept secret that part of the appeal of the original name “Orcus” for this Kuiper belt object was that it sounds like the island. My wife Diane lived on Orcus Island through her high school years. We go back to visit as often as we can. The name was a small present to her. She has, of course, thoroughly forgotten about this by now. But I could indeed revive her memory by naming the satellite after something related. One summer while we were visiting and playing our typical game of “let’s pick up a real estate guide and fantasize about houses we can’t afford” I became enamored of this one house that was on a tiny island just off of Orcas Island. You have to go back and forth to Orcas by motorboat to get your groceries, visit your favorite coffee shop, or walk more than 200 yards at a time. I talked about it all the time and how much I would love to have a house on an island like that. Diane became worried that I might actually be serious. I have, in the past, lived in odd places like sailboats and cabins in the woods with no running water. I might have it in me. I think that just to keep Diane a little on her toes, it would be fun to remind her of this time and name the satellite “Crane Island.” But, really, Orcus is not Orcas. And not even Shamu. So I sadly have to pass on this one.

Finally, we get to the more ancient mythology. As I admitted earlier, my heart was always here, though I was willing to consider these other themes.

Overall, the suggestions of and votes for Greek, Roman, and Etruscan mythological characters exceeded all of the other suggestions by a large amount.

The top contenders were Prosperina (a Latinized version of Persephone, wife of Pluto), Vanth (an Etruscan goddess associated with the dead), Phlegyas (a boatman for the dead), and Cerberus (the three headed dog guarding the fates)

At this point, I believe it best to revert to the analysis offered by readers here.

From Sovay:

Vanth and Charun are traditionally paired in Etruscan iconography, so her association with Orcus forms a nice parallel to Charon and Pluto; in keeping with the satellite's unclear origins, Vanth's role is not cut-and-dried (she is generally accepted as a psychopomp, possibly a benevolent counterpart to the demonic Charun) and where Orcus and Charon can be traced into other mythologies, Vanth is attested only in Etruscan; and if she accompanies dead souls from the moment of death to the underworld itself, then of course her face is turned always toward Orcus.

From JohnD

I suggest "Cerberus", the many-headed guard-dog of Hades. The name has been used elsewhere in the Solar System and the constellations, but not for a semi-planetary body, so I think it would still be allowed. And Cerberus was, in Virgil's words,

"Orcus' warder, blood-besmeared,
Growling o'er gory bones half-cleared
Down in his gloomy den"

so a classical connection with Orcus.

From Tim:

My suggested name is Prosperina. Sources differ, but as far as I can tell, Orcus and Dis Pater (the origin of ‘Dis’, which of course we see as the capital of hell in the Divine Comedy) were synonyms for the same godProsperina was the Roman name for his wife, and you will know her as Persephone, doomed to live for 4 months in hell and for 8 months in heaven because of her consumption of a single pomegranate seed. I like this because I imagine this little moon captured and dragged out on Orcus’ great elliptical orbit, destined to wander far from the plane of the planets for all eternity, a little icy queen of the void. Gosh, I need to go and have a cup of tea to cheer me up now.

From Matthew:

Pluto was god of the underworld in Roman mythology, and Charon ferried souls across the river Acheron in early Greek and Roman mythology. Pluto has his equivalent in Orcus, being used as an alternative name for Pluto, and having separate connections to the underworld. Charon, too, has an equivalent in Phlegyas, ferrying souls across the river Styx. Since the Kuiper belt object Orcus can be considered the anti-Pluto and therefore is named due to this relation, it seems fitting to name the first moon of Orcus in a way that fits the connection between Pluto and its first moon, Charon. This, of course, would lead to the name Phlegyas being chosen for “S/1 90482 (2005)”. In addition, Charon, in mythology, seems to be completely connected with the underworld with no indication that he ever existed apart from it. On the other hand Phlegyas does not enter the underworld until Apollo kills him for burning his temple. If Pluto and Charon formed out of a giant collision, as is believed, then Charon's entire lifetime is linked to Pluto. However, if Orcus captured its moon,which may be the case, then it would have existed before its connection with Orcus. This is even further correlation between the connections in mythology of Pluto to Charon and Orcus to Phlegyas and the objects in our solar system. So, to be true to the connection between named objects in the solar system and mythology, as well as to the connection between Pluto and Charon and Orcus and its first moon, I propose the name "Phlegyas" be given to the object “S/1 90482 (2005)”.

And so finally I have to chose, after all of these good names and great discussions. And so. And so. And so…..

Prosperina has a great connection to Orcus, but she is more strongly associated with Pluto than with Orcus. I like the idea of keeping Orcus and Pluto distinct. Cerberus suffers from the same problem.

I am strongly drawn to Matthew’s description of Phlegyas, in particular the strong link to the mystery of the formation of Orcus’s moon. That’s good. Really good. I was almost about to say OK, let’s do it, but I got stuck. Phlegyas is being punished for burning down Apollo’s temple after Apollo killed his daughter. He now wanders Hades reminding people to respect the gods. Are kidding me? If Apollo ever came down and killed my daughter he would get much worse than just his temple being burnt down. And when I went to Hades I would not talk about respecting the gods. Every time I read his story I just get mad. Maybe putting Phlegyas in space releases him from his punishment in Hades.

And finally Vanth. I will tell you this: Vanth got the most votes. It was never my intention that this become an election, but, if it had been, Vanth would be the winner. The appeal to me – and to everyone who voted for Vanth I would guess – is pretty clear. Vanth is one of the few purely Etruscan deities, and a chthonic one at that. She is a psychopomp. I mention these last two facts mainly because I had no idea what they meant until I looked them up (she is an underworld god who conveys dead souls, is what it means). She likes to hang out with Charun, a name which derives, unsurprisingly, from Charon, which makes a nice parallel. And while she’s associated with the underworld, she is a guide rather than an avenger. She awaits the dead and brings them to their new home.

Vanth doesn’t do nearly a good a job of telling the potential story of the formation of the satellite of Orcus, though. So until yesterday I was still unsure. But yesterday while reading about Vanth and reading about Phlegyas, I stumbled across a picture of very nice fresco at the tomb of Anina. Vanth is waiting for the dead, as she is often depicted. It even appears to me that she is silently crying while she waits. Admittedly, I might be misinterpreting, but still, the tear made me think of my sister, waiting for my father – guiding my father – as he took his last breaths.

In a solar system filled with Apollos (asteroid #1862, discovered in 1932) who might kill your daughter, Zeuses (asteroid #5731, discovered in 1988) who might abduct your daughter (or your son, for that matter), Tantaluses (asteroid #2102, discovered in 1975) who might feed you his son, or Erises (the largerst dwarf planet, discovered in 2005) who might start a world war, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone who weeps for the dead? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a guide to light the way?

So it will be Vanth.

The citation submitted to the IAU has to be short and can only hint at the richness of everything that has gone on here. It will read:

S/1 (90482) (2005) Vanth

Discovered 13 Nov 2005 by M.E. Brown and T.-A Suer.

Vanth is a daimon in Etruscan mythology who guides the dead to the underworld. She often appears on tomb paintings and sarcophagi where she is depicted with wings and a torch, and she is frequently shown in the presence of Charun, a guard of the underworld. Name suggested by Sonya Taaffe.

Thanks to everyone for participating. Having gone through all of this, I realize that naming a moon was perhaps a bit too constraining, as the theme was already in place. Next time perhaps we will try to find a name for one of the many many other objects out there that are deserving and for which the field is wide open. As always, stay tuned.

S/1 90482 (2005) needs your help

“S/1 90482 (2005)” is really not much a name as a license plate number. As does a license plate number, it tells you pretty much everything you need to know to identify the object in question. “S” is for satellite. “/1” means it is the first discovered. The “2005” at the end tells the date of discover, and the “90482” tells whose satellite it is, but only by yet another number. This number refers to the 90482nd minor planet (in the old terminology; no one quite knows what the new terminology is, but the numbers keep coming) to be officially recorded. That object is more commonly referred to as the large Kuiper belt object Orcus. We don’t ever call the moon of Orcus by its official name of S/1 90482 (2005). Instead, around here, it is referred to mostly as “the moon of Orcus.”

It’s time to change that.

Not all of the Kuiper belt objects known and number have names, and, as I have written here earlier, I think most don’ t need them. It is OK to consign them to semi-anonymous license plate numbers if they are never really going to be thought about as more than one of the crowd. But a few special objects get studied and talked about and written about enough that need not so much just names, but also personalities. Orcus was one of those objects. Its personality was quite apparent from the beginning.

We discovered Orcus in early 2004. At the time it was the 4th largest known Kuiper belt object, though by now it has dropped to something like 8th. The most interesting thing about Orcus to me was that it appeared to be the anti-Pluto.

Pluto has what was originally thought to be a peculiar orbit. It circles the sun precisely two times for every three times that Neptune goes around the sun. Though it took astronomers a long time to realize it, this peculiarity is not a coincidence. Neptune’s gravity so dominates the region of space where Pluto is that Neptune has herded Pluto into this very special orbit. Pluto is not the only one that Neptune is pushing around. We now know of hundreds of similar objects in the Kuiper belt, including, now, Orcus.

Pluto’s orbit has a few other interesting features to it. It is so elongated that, for a brief time during its revolution about the sun, it actually comes close to the sun than does Neptune. So does Orcus. When Pluto comes close to the sun, though, it is never actually close to Neptune, partially because at that point in its orbit it is high above the disk of the planets, hitting the most extreme spot of its tilted orbit. Just like Orcus.

In fact, if you look at the orbits of Pluto and Orcus (and I encourage you to do it if you never have; check out the extremely cool orbit plotter at JPL but you'll have to zoom out to find Orcus), you will see that they are nearly identical except for 2 things. Their elongated orbits point in nearly opposite directions, and, right now, Pluto is nearly as close as it ever comes to the sun while Orcus is nearly as far away as it ever comes. In fact, because Pluto and Orcus are forced by Neptune to have precisely the same orbital period, they will always stay in opposite phases of their orbits.

Orcus is the anti-Pluto.

Several years ago, when searching for a name for what was then known only as 2004 DW, we decided to concentrate on the anti-Pluto aspect of the object’s personality, and we came up with Orcus. In the version of the Orcus myth that I like to tell, Orcus was, essentially, the early Etruscan grim reaper, collecting the dead and bringing them to the underworld where another god – Pluto – ruled. As the Etruscan mythology was incorporated into Roman mythology and blended with Greek mythology, Orcus lost his separate identity and Pluto became the master of all of the functions of the dead. Orcus became in some ways simply an alternate name for Pluto, but it also remained a slightly more evil and punishing incarnation of Pluto. In that incarnation, the Latin word Orcus was the origin of words such as ogre and orc.

In my new mythological/astronomical view, Pluto the Kuiper belt object is now named after that earlier version of Pluto, before the Romans came along and swept everything together. And Orcus is his counterpart, destined to eventually be pushed aside by the rising Pluto. Orcus seemed a very appropriate name for this new object in the Kuiper belt.

About a year later, while looking carefully at Orcus with the Hubble Space Telescope, we realized that it had a moon. In the past year we have been studying the moon of Orcus intensely and are in the final stages of writing a scientific paper on all of the interesting things about this moon. Which means it is time to stop calling it “this moon” and give it a proper name. But what?

Here’s where you come in. Send me suggestions! I’ll submit the best suggestion to the International Astronomical Union on Sunday, April 5th (about 2 weeks from now) with your name as part of the official citation (if you want it to be).

If you make a suggestion I would like to know not just what the suggestion is, but why you think its appropriate. As you can tell by now, this is the part that matters to me!

To help you out, let me tell you some of the other interesting things about the satellite. It has about a ten day orbit around Orcus, in a tight precise circle. We suspect – though can’t yet prove – that Orcus and its satellite have their same faces locked towards each other constantly, like an orbiting dumbbell. Only one other Kuiper belt object and satellite are known to do this. Who? Pluto and Charon, of course.

The origin of the satellite of Orcus is confusing. Pluto and Charon are thought to have formed in a giant collision. Haumea clearly had a shattering blow to disperse moons and other family members. But small Kuiper belt objects are thought to acquired moons by simple capture.

Orcus is right in the middle. Was the satellite from a collision or a capture? We had hoped to answer this question by observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. If the satellite had looked just like other known collisional satellite, we would have been pretty convinced. It doesn’t. Unfortunately that tells us less. We can’t rule out either. We have some ideas of new Hubble Space Telescope observations to try to tell the difference. For now, though, we’re just confused.

While the scientific paper will have more details and calculations, that will be the gist of it, and those properties are all you get to know to try to discern the personality of the moon of Orcus and to try to pull out the right name.

You can send suggestions as comments to these pages (www.mikebrowns planets.com in case you are reading this elsewhere) or simply email me ( ), but please put “Orcus” in the subject line so I don’t mistake you for a potentially business partner from Nigeria.

Good luck. S/1 90482 (2005) is counting on you.

Bluer still

continued from last week.

After lunch comes the final push for getting ready for the night. The support astronomers (astronomers who work at the observatory and who know much much much more about the telescopes and instruments than you could ever hope to know) arrive to help start setting things up for the night, the daytime crew at the summit does their final checkouts in preparation for the evening, and the astronomers (Emily and I) do the final mental and computational run through of the night to make sure everything is going to work out OK.

Emily and I are both paranoid about having done something dreadfully (or, even, trivially) wrong that will result in the loss of observing time. I think that such a healthy paranoia is one of the best traits an astronomer could have. Chances are, in fact, that you have done something dreadfully wrong the first time, and only by being paranoid enough to double, triple, and (with the two of us trying to out-paranoid each other) quadruple check do you actually get anything done. Today our paranoia results in the discovery of a bug in a computer program that we use to track the Kuiper belt objects across the sky. The bug causes the telescope to track a small fraction slower than it should. We fix the bug, do all of the calculations on paper with a calculator to make sure we really are getting the right answer, and then convince ourselves that we are indeed ready to go for the night.

Meanwhile, Jim, one of our support astronomers, walks in the room and casually says "oh hey we may be a little slow firing everything up this afternoon, as there was a power glitch at the summit just a few minutes ago."

Usually power glitches don't do anything, as most of the observatory runs on backup for short glitches, but, as we just learned, the laser, in particular doesn't. If I understood the explanation correctly, the laser almost draws more electrical power than the entire rest of the observatory. It has to be isolated on its own circuit. Luckily, the Hawaii Electrical Company (HELCO. At some point in the afternoon someone remarked "Add one more L and the name would be appropriate) essentially guarantees that there will be no glitches. Unluckily, this guarantee does little to prevent glitches.

Apparently, glitches are bad for the laser. I would tell you why, but I don't actually understand enough to tell you why. I am not an engineer. I tried building things with my brother -- who is an engineer -- when we were kids, and his were always fabulously designed and assembled constructions, while mine would always hang precariously for a while until they fell to the ground. At which point I could explain, in theory, why my design should have been perfectly good. Astronomers rely on a vast pyramid of highly skilled and highly creative people who understand all of these things we don't (laser physics, oil bearings, active mirror control, cryogenic mechanical operations, to name a tiny fraction) and who are dedicated to making them work.

The laser was not coming back up.

In any complex system like a Keck telescope many many things have the possibility of going wrong, so it is not unusual for there to be a little afternoon panic. We've learned not to panic. Emily and I, now fully prepared for the evening, spent our time watching the satellite weather image update every half hour. The huge mass of clouds to the west was slowing blowing our way, pixel-by-pixel. Based on how the clouds had moved over the past twelve hours, we were pretty sure that we would have a few good hours in the evening before they hit. And, even then, you never know. We have been at the telescope before when an impenetrably opaque bank of clouds mysteriously parted just as it reached the Big Island. So we still had hope.

In the background we could hear conversations taking place at the summit, between the summit and the small crowd gathered in the control room, and between some in the crowd and other people who had been called. It was a Saturday. The laser was not coming back up.

The first line of defense when something goes wrong is the set of people who are working that day. Yes, it was a Saturday, but Saturday had a night like any other day, so there were people working hard to make sure the telescope worked that night. But when the first line of defense fails, anyone and everyone can be called at any time of the day or night. In the background conversational snippets I could hear, I started to hear a common refrain. "I think we need Kenny." "Has anyone seen Kenny?" "Do you know where Kenny is the weekend?" Voices were beginning to sound slightly more panicky.

Kenny knows the laser better than anyone. If the laser is acting up, Kenny can calm it down. If the laser is not coming back up, Kenny will know what to do. But Kenny was not on call on Saturday. If someone is on call they are required to be a phone call away. Kenny could be anywhere on the island or just asleep with his phone unplugged. There was no way to know.

It was about this moment when someone slipped into the back of the room. He was wearing beach apparel, slightly sunburnt, and, frankly looked like he hadn't showered in a few days. If it weren't for the fact that I know that the building is locked, I would have guessed that someone had hiked the 15 miles uphill from the beach and was looking for a cool glass of water. Or, more likely, beer. Everyone turned around: "Kenny!"

"Sorry for the clothes, I've been out camping and just got the message on my cell that the laser is not coming up."

Everybody seemed greatly relieved. The voices all around continued. Emily and I went over plans and counter plans. The mass of clouds continued its slow march.

About an hour and a half before sunset, the Observing Assistant arrives at the summit. The OA is the one who drives the telescope all night long and makes sure everything goes smoothly at the mountaintop. Another piece of the pyramid. And, tonight, it is Cindy, one of our favorite people to work with in the whole place. Emily and Cindy and I have spent many nights together at the telescope (or at least she is at the telescope; we're still down in Waimea), sometimes working hard, sometimes trying hard to stay awake, sometimes playing silly games to distract ourselves from the fact that the night is slipping away and we're still not getting any work done because it is raining on the telescope.

As sunset closed in the conversations surrounding Kenny sounded up beat. The laser was almost there. It was going to be yet another afternoon of panic followed by smooth sailing all night long.

"What was THAT?" said Kenny.

Not a good question for Kenny to ask.

He asked Cindy, up at the summit: "Was there a power glitch?"

"Well, yeah, this afternoon," Cindy replied.

"No, I mean right now," said Kenny.

Cindy checked all of her systems, called other telescopes, looked everywhere, and finally declared, no. No glitches. This time, for once, HELCO did not do anything it wasn't supposed to.

But the laser was dead. And no one knew quite why. And to make things worse, the sun set. On a good night, we would, right now, open up the telescope, swing the dome around, and begin the night's work. Tonight, we were dead in the water, and there was nothing Emily or I could do. We watched the satellite image, recalculated the time that we thought the clouds would hit, and listened to the chatter in the background. We were not panicking at this point, but we were suddenly feeling extremely antsy. The sky was still clear for maybe two more hours, and our telescope was not even open.

We assumed that the laser would come up pretty quickly when suddenly one of the support astronomers asked, "Are you sure there were no power glitches? The entire adaptive optics system has lost power, too."

This whole adaptive optics system is sufficiently complicated that every single day it needs to be carefully calibrated to make sure that it is correcting the distortions of the atmosphere just right. Losing power meant that all of those calibrations had to start from scratch. Our first support astronomer, Jim, now joined by a second, Hien, set to work doing the recalibration.

Phone calls were made. Saturday night dinners were ruined. Evenings out were postponed. Everyone who knew things about the laser and the adaptive optics were called in from whatever they were doing.

I can't relay all of the different strings of conversations that were going on throughout the room. Neither Emily nor I were one bit of use to this, so we just stayed in the background, talking quietly, watching the clouds get closer and closer. At some point Kenny realized that not only were his Saturday night plans slightly modified, they might soon take a colder turn. Nothing was working and no one knew why, so Kenny decided he was probably going to have to take the hour long drive up to the summit for some hands-on work. The summit temperature hovers around freezing, so Kenny decided it would be best to take a shower and find some warmed clothes before he went. No one is ever really prepared for having to go to 13,000 feet when just a few hours earlier they were camping on the beach.

Jim warned us: "This is going to take at least an hour, in the best possible case. And I mean an hour from whenever the power is restored." Which was not yet. "Would you like to switch to a different instrument?"

As the sky was clear, Jim was offering us the chance to do something other than adaptive optics, which was better than doing nothing at all. We jumped up from our corner.

"Let's switch to NIRSPEC" I said to Emily.

NIRSPEC cleverly stands for near-infrared spectrograph, which means that we could use the instrument not to take extra-crisp pictures, but to analyze the light that comes from the object to see what the object might be made out of.

Switching to NIRSPEC was not in our contingency plan. The possibility that the sky might be clear but the adaptive optics system might be broken was so far down our list of possibilities that we never planned. Emily and I ran down the possibilities.

Me: "We can only look at the brightest of the Kuiper belt objects with NIRSPEC. What's up in the sky right now"

Emily: "2003 EL61 won't rise for about another hour. Quaoar will not rise until the end of the night. Orcus and 2005 FY9 are both up right now."

Me: "OK, we will not be able to do anything useful on Orcus in a short amount of time. I'd love to have NIRSPEC on Orcus for 3 nights in a row. But a few hours? Worthless."

Emily: "Agreed. OK. 2005 FY9? We have already analyzed much of the spectrum. We could collect more data to simply add it to what we have."

Me: "Boring. Let's try something new. There is a region of the spectrum that we've never looked at before. We never looked because we assumed there was nothing interesting there. But wouldn't you rather look somewhere new on the off chance that there might be something interesting that you hadn't thought about before than to look somewhere old to see it slightly better when you already know what is there?"

Emily: "That is only a moderately good argument."

Me: "Tonight I will definitely settle for moderately good."

Me, to Cindy: "Let's take the telescope over to 2005 FY9."

We got to the nice bright Kuiper belt object, began to collect data, and started to relax a little. The voices in the background were still a bit frantic. Even more people were in the room. But at least we were collecting new data.

Ten minutes after we started, the first cloud hit.

"Where did our object go?" Emily asked.

Cindy went outside to look, and it was true. Some of the clouds were arriving early. Even our desperation backup plan was not going to work very well.

The good news, though, was that the adaptive optics system was finally back up and running. The power had been restored after someone realized that one of the fans to cool the enormous power load of the laser system had not turned on after the initial power outage. A temperature sensor somewhere registered that things were heating up and shut everything down. This was good, otherwise all of the electronics would have been fried. But it was bad, because there was no obvious sign of what had happened except that nothing worked for a while. With some detective work and a few phone calls to people who thought they were going to have a free Saturday night to problem was found, the breaker switch was flipped, and the power came back on. The laser was still being massaged back to life by Kenny and company, but at least the adaptive optics system was going to work.

"OK, let's switch back" I said.

Part of Emily's Ph.D. thesis was the study of Titan with adaptive optics. Titan can be seen even though clouds, so at least this was going to work.

"The humidity is starting to spike" said Cindy's voice from the video screen.

Humidity. Argh. Telescope optics are delicate, so one does not want water condensing on them. If the humidity gets too high or if fog is around the telescopes must close immediately. I have been at the summit of Mauna Kea before on a beautiful clear night, walked outside, and in the slight moonlight been able to see that not a single telescope was open. Humidity. I'd rather that it just rained. Humidity is the worst. But as long as it stays low enough we were still ok.

"We are going to try not to think about the humidity and we're just going to go to Titan instead."

Jim chimed in, "We can stay open, but you should know that at moderately high humidity the lens in front of the laser has a tendency to fog up. We can then try to unfog the laser using the LLUD (Laser Lens Unfogging Device), but it doesn't work so well. If this happens we usually can't use the laser again for the rest of the night. We could for now install the LLCD (Laser lens covering device) that will keep the laser lens from fogging while we're not using it."

I asked what, exactly, where the LLUD and the LLCD. Jim answered, "The LLUD is a hair dryer. The LLCD is a large piece of plastic."

OK. If we have any hope of using the laser tonight we had better keep the lens dry. Let's do it.

Jim: "It requires pointing the telescope down towards the horizon and having someone stand up on the deck and place the piece of plastic up there. It'll take about 20 minutes."

Me & Emily: sigh.

Twenty minutes later, and about 3 hours after the sun set, we finally get to go to our first real target: Titan. But all of our staring at the satellite images had taught us one thing: the clouds were coming 3 hours after sunset. And our predictions were right. While Titan can be done pretty well though moderate clouds, we could barely see the thing.

Me & Emily: sigh.

After about 30 minutes there was word from Kenny: "The laser is ready to go!"

So at 11pm we were finally at full strength for the night, but the clouds covered the whole sky. We knew that the night was mostly lost, but we had hope that perhaps there would be a 30 minute sucker hole in the clouds that we could jump at. In just 30 minutes we could make a single observation of the positions of the moons of the Kuiper belt object 2003 EL61. Even one quick measurement would make us feel we had salvaged the night.

We swung the telescope to the position of 2003 EL61, watched the sky, and waited. Kenny kept the laser idling waiting to bring it up.

And we waited.

The satellite looked even more dismal than before.

A friend who was using the telescope in a few nights walked in to check on how we were doing. Our glum faces told the whole story.

"Do you mind if we use the telescope?" he asked.

"Can you do something useful in this mess?" I replied.

"Just maybe."

"Take it away. But we'll take it back if it ever clears."

Letting someone else take the telescope in really really bad conditions is a fabulous thing. Even with bad weather there is some residual guilt that I always feel about not taking data. Sometimes to assuage that guilt you take data that you know are worthless and that you will never use. But if someone else could possibly make use of the data all of your guilt is relieved.

My friend and his student then swung the telescope to the brightest star that they thought was interesting. The star was so bright that it could easily have been seen by eye if there were no clouds. But, now, the Keck telescope, the largest in the world, was having a difficult time even detecting it. Eventually the locked on and began to take data. We monitored how dim the star looked, and, knowing how bright it was supposed to be, could tell how bad the clouds were. In general the clouds made the star around 300 times dimmer than it is supposed to be. I suspect that they got no useful data throughout the night, either. But at least the guilt is now theirs.

By 3am I was tired and bored and the satellite image looked horrible. I gave up. I went to sleep.

Emily has more stamina so she decided to stay awake the last few hours. She promised to call if the sky ever cleared.

The phone never rang. The laser never fired. All of the people who sacrificed their Saturday nights to laser and adaptive optics were in turn sacrificed to the gods of weather. I apologized to and thanked everyone I knew who stayed and worked hard to make it happen for naught. No one seemed phased. Of course that's what they would do. Having the laser ready even on the slim chance that the clouds parted was the only thing that even occurred to them.

Astronomy is a pyramid, and, in this case, the pyramid is built on some pretty solid blocks.

People often ask: What happens if you have nights scheduled on the telescope and the weather conspires to prevent you from doing the project you had proposed to do? The answer: you can apply again next year. It is simply the luck of the draw.

We'll never know what we missed that night. Were the clouds on Titan doing something interesting (like the clouds on Earth were)? Where were the moons of 2003 EL61 that night? Could we have figured out what Orcus's moon was made of? We will apply again next year.

It's a long flight back home from Hawaii. Sometimes I sit on the airplane with my laptop salivating over all of the data that we collected. Sometimes I quietly meditate while thinking through the steps of the analysis that needs to be done. This time I slept. And I dreamt. And in my dreams the clouds parted, a bright yellow laser shot up into the sky, and the outer part of our solar system started to reveal its secrets.

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