Kepler is crippled: Positioning system broken

Coutesy NASA – click for BIG image

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – NASA’s first telescope dispatched to hunt for Earth-like planets that may support life elsewhere in the universe has lost use of its positioning system, threatening its mission, officials said on Wednesday.

Launched in 2009, the Kepler space telescope revolutionized the study of so-called exoplanets, with discovery of 130 worlds orbiting distant stars and 2,700 potential planets still awaiting confirmation.

The telescope was designed to gaze at about 100,000 distant sun-like stars, searching for planets passing by, or transiting, relative to its line of sight. Detecting slight dips in the amount of light from a planet crossing the face of its parent star requires extremely precise pointing.

The telescope, the cornerstone of a $650 million mission, lost that ability on Tuesday when a second steadying spinning wheel stopped working.

Solar activity affecting the earth, the link

What follows is incomplete, I’ve decided to throw this out early, let the team help fill in more detail.

Original drawing from 1999 paper

“The role of solar forcing upon climate change”
B. van Geel!,*, O.M. Raspopov”, H. Renssen#, J. van der Plicht$,
V.A. Dergachev%, H.A.J. Meijer$ [1][2 details]

Tim Cullen: Illumination from the Geochemical Society

This is the first of two guest posts from Tim Cullen on the fascinating subject of photon production in planetary atmospheres:

The concept of a “fluorescing atmosphere” is generally dismissed as cranky [or just plain crazy] by most pundits and commentators.

Therefore, I am extremely grateful to Professor Mark A. Smith and Hiroshi Imanaka for publishing a truly remarkable paper on the Geochemical Society website that clearly illustrates that photons are produced in the atmosphere.

The blue emissions are indicative of atomic hydrogen [but there are other atmospheric atomic gases that emit blue photon – such as helium] and are produced in many ways [including]:
a) Electrons colliding with atomic gas particles.
b) Solar photon colliding with atomic gas particles.
c) Atomic gas particles recombining to form molecules.

Though less is directly known regarding the haze layers, lying predominantly below the direct reach of Cassini, much is now known regarding the atmosphere above the haze.

Using the Ion-Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) on Cassini, we now know that even in the ionosphere, there is a rich and complex organic chemistry unparalleled in any known atmosphere (Waite, 2005; Waite, 2009).

Greenhouse Panic Over: New model demonstrates dependence of Planetary surface temperature on atmospheric pressure

New talkshop visitor ‘David’ has dropped a fruitful link on Wayne Jackson’s recent thread which, after a bit of sleuthing via AstroBio.net, leads to a new paper from the Trieste Astrobiology Group led by Giovanni Vladilo. This will be of great interest to our friends Nikolov and Zeller, because it vindicates their contention that atmospheric pressure is the principle determinant of planetary surface temperatures. However, there is a twist. As well as affecting the near surface heat capacity, evaporation rates and meridional energy transport, atmospheric pressure also affects the atmospheric optical depth of atmospheres, and this explains the role of ‘greenhouse gases’ and their radiative properties in contributing to the overall distribution and magnitude of energy at planetary surfaces. Although not dscussed in the paper, I think it will also be the case that regardless of extra emissions of a greenhouse gas such as carbon dioxide, since the pressure is the primary variable, the optical depth will remain constant, as NASA Physicist Ferenc Miskolzci found. If so, the Man Made Greenhouse Panic is over.

The pressure-dependent habitable zone is shown in the left figure below. The circles indicate solutions of the climate simulations with mean global annual habitability h>0. The area of the circles is proportional to the habitability h; the colors are coded according to the mean annual global surface temperature, Tm. The size and color scales are shown in the legend. The solid lines are contours of equal mean temperature Tm=0 C (magenta), 60 C (red) and 120 C (black). (Click for larger image)

The key passage from the paper is this one:

4.2.1. Surface Pressure and Planet Temperature Variations of surface pressure affect the temperature in two ways. First, for a given atmospheric composition, the infrared optical depth of the atmosphere will increase with pressure. As a result, a rise of [pressure] will always lead to a rise of the [radiative] greenhouse effect and temperature. Second, the horizontal heat transport increases with pressure. In our model, this is reflected by the linear increase with [pressure] of the diffusion coefficient D (Equation (A5), Appendix A.2). At variance with the first effect, it is not straightforward to predict how the temperature will react to a variation of the horizontal transport. In the case of Earth, our EBM calculations predict a rise of the mean temperature with increasing D. This is due to the fact that the increased diffusion from the equator to the poles tends to reduce the polar ice covers and, as a consequence, to reduce the albedo and raise the temperature.

Ian Wilson: How planets could be modulating solar activity – The VEJ Torquing Model

In advance of a more technical post about Ian Wilson’s new paper, this article from his blog lays out in the clearest possible terms the basics of the model he has developed in accordance with observations. Mainstream solar scientists don’t have any explanation for the longer term behaviours of the Sun. This model has both explanatory and predictive power, since the movement of the planets can be accurately pre-determined from first principles using celestial mechanics theory and the ephemerides created from it. The power of planetary tidal effects on the boundary conditions of the Sun are not yet known, but building a model which accords with observations is a powerful step along the way to a complete theoretical development.

As with any new idea there are many people who have contributed to its overall development. Listed here are just a few people who  have contributed to the evolution of the VEJ Tidal Model over the years:

J. P. Desmoulins
Ulric Lyons
C-C. Hung
Ian Wilson
Ray Tomes
P. A. Semi
Roy Martin
Rog ‘Tallbloke’ Tattersall
Paul Vaughan

However the first reference that we can find to this model [hat tip to Paul Vaughan) is that of:

Bollinger, C.J. (1952). A 44.77 year Jupiter-Earth-Venus configuration Sun-tide period in solar-climate cycles. Academy of Science for 1952 – Proceedings of the Oklahoma 307-311. who  illustrated the ~22 year JEV cycle  over 60 years ago — see the configurations illustrated in Table 1 on p.308.

Sir Mark Sets Out his Priorities

Sir Mark Walport, the government’s new chief scientific advisor has given a talk at Cambridge University setting out his stall for the job ahead. It’s fairly dry and I doubt many here will sit through all of it, but I just thought I’d highlight minutes 12 to 16 where he discusses energy. In giving a passing nod to ‘sustainability’ as “one of three lenses” energy policy needs to be looked at through (the others mentioned ahead of it being energy security and energy affordability), Sir mark, unusually for a policy wonk, gives a mention to space-weather; “the ionising, the electromagnetic radiation from the Sun”. Now that’s a bit of a curve ball to throw in to a talk about the science-policy interface, and I think it’s a coded message to the enviro-lobbyists that they’re not going to find Sir Mark compliant on the issue of ‘the science’. It’s not so much a shot across the bows of Greenpeace as a gesture towards a box of limpet mines. Maybe my missive really did hit it’s mark, or maybe Sir Mark was already alive to the Climate and Solar uncertainty issues. Either way, I’m glad to see we have a chief science advisor who has a broader perspective on the thorny issues around energy policy than his predecessor.

‘Earth-like’ Blue Planets Discovered Orbiting Distant Star

From the Telegraph:

Two Earth-like planets thought to be covered in water have been discovered orbiting a distant star and may even have the right conditions to support life.

Astronomers believe the two ocean dominated worlds, which are around one and a half times the size of Earth, lie within the so-called Goldilocks zone around their star.

This is the distance from the star where it would be neither too hot nor too cold for there to be liquid water on the planet surface.

Scientists using Nasa’s Kepler space telescope, which has been searching for habitable planets outside our solar system, spotted the two planets orbiting a star called Kepler-62 1,200 light years away.

Paul Vaughan: Comparing Jupiter-Earth-Venus Alignment Cycles With Variation in the Solar Rotation Period.

My Thanks to Paul Vaughan, who has sent me a plot he has made of the variation in the rate of solar rotation determined by Russian scientists A. G. Tlatov and V. I. Makarov in their 2005 paper ’22-Year Variations of the Solar Rotation’ and Jupiter-Earth-Venus alignment cycles. The J-E-V cycle and it’s close synchrony with solar activity indicators such as sunspot number and solar rotation has been a subject of investigation on this blog since it started in 2009. Many contributors have offered new insight to this fascinating subject, and there is now a substantial body of peer reviewed literature in this area, as well as many articles on this site from Astrophysicist Ian Wilson, researchers Roy Martin, Ray Tomes, Jean-Pierre Desmoulins, P.A. Semi, and myself. If I missed anyone, shout up and I’ll add your name to this list of J-E-V investigators.

J-E-V cycles compared to solar rotation rate 1887-2003

Time for another look at the possible planetary effect on solar variability as Callebaut and de Jager are rebutted

One year ago. Anthony Watts published an article on wattsupwiththat.com about a paper By Callebaut, Duhau and de Jager which concluded in part:

[T]he planetary effects are too small by several orders of magnitude to be a main cause of the solar cycle (they can be at most a small modulation); moreover,
they fail to give an explanation for the polarity changes in the solar cycle. In addition, the periods of revolution of the planets (in particular Jupiter) do not seem compatible with the solar cycle over long times. In fact, a planetary explanation of the solar cycle is hardly possible.

This was something of a straw man argument, since proponents of the solar-planetary theory here and elsewhere have never claimed planetary effects “to be a main cause of the solar cycle” but a modulating influence on the immense energies pouring from the Sun. The comment about Jupiter’s orbital period was just stupid really. They can hardly have been unaware that the interactions of tidally significant planets; Jupiter, Earth and Venus produce an average time period which exactly matches the average solar cycle length of 11.07 years, yet they didn’t mention it. Nor did they acknowledge that tides are still not well characterised by first principles theory even today. In the view of many informed commenters, it was an inept hatchet job which consensus solar physicist Leif Svalgaard had recommended to Anthony Watts because he wanted the worlds biggest climate discussion site to mirror his own ill conceived prejudices.

Following a bruising 325 comment thread, Anthony called a halt: saying:

Wayne Jackson: Atmospheric mass not composition is the key to the greenhouse effect

Following the marathon thread about Willis Eschenbah’s ‘steel greenhouse’ concept, Wayne takes the discussion of real planets and the way their energy balance points are considered in a new and promising direction.

Earth TSI, 1362 W/m² / 4 = 340.5 * (1-0.3022 Bond albedo) = 237.6 OLR & also solar input

Venus TSI 2614 W/m² / 4 = 653.5 * (1-0.9000 Bond albedo) = 65.35 OLR & also solar input

Earth surface temperature 289.1 K per TFK2009

Venus surface temperature 735.4 K, 0.3°C greater than the VIRA (Venus Int’l Ref. Atm.) data