[HN Gopher] Exploring Nine Simultaneous Transients on April 12th...
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Exploring Nine Simultaneous Transients on April 12th, 1950 (2021)
Author : jandrewrogers
Score : 28 points
Date : 2025-02-02 16:25 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| twic wrote:
| The most striking this about this paper, to me, is that the
| editor accepted it without a resolution to the mystery! That's a
| rare treat in the story-hungry world of modern science.
|
| Also, the story about potassium flare stars is good:
|
| https://safe.menlosecurity.com/https://guyworthey.net/2017/0...
|
| Tempted to ask some LLMs about the astrophysics of potassium
| flare stars and see what they dream up.
|
| EDIT searched google for "what is the surface temperature of a
| potassium flare star", and got this 'AI Overview':
|
| [begins]
|
| A potassium flare star, typically classified as a late K or early
| M type star, has a surface temperature ranging from around 2,500
| to 4,000 Kelvin. This is because flare stars generally fall
| within the cooler spectrum of stars, appearing orange or red in
| color due to their lower temperatures.
|
| Key points about potassium flare stars:
|
| * Spectral type: Late K to early M
|
| * Temperature range: 2,500 - 4,000 Kelvin
|
| * Color: Orange to red
|
| * Characteristic: Frequent flares of increased brightness caused
| by sudden energy release in the stellar atmosphere
|
| [ends]
|
| I think that's about right for flare stars in general. Just not
| potassium flare stars.
| araes wrote:
| Used to a kind of popular topic in the astronomical community
| back in the 60's. [1][2][3]
|
| [1] 1962, https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-
| iarticle_que...
|
| [2] 1967, https://adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1967lts..conf..160A
|
| [3] 1967, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40674487
|
| People still write about the potassium abundance in stars, just
| not quite so much publication in recent decades. [4][5]
|
| [4] 2002, https://academic.oup.com/pasj/article-
| abstract/54/2/275/2135...
|
| [5] 2012, https://academic.oup.com/pasj/article-
| abstract/64/2/38/14823...
| ddahlen wrote:
| I work on asteroid/comet orbit calculations for my day job. I had
| not actually seen this paper before, though I have done some
| detective work in old Palomar images in the past:
| https://caltech-ipac.github.io/kete/tutorials/palomar.html
|
| I spent a few minutes and downloaded the image frame they cite in
| the paper and ran it through a similar analysis looking for known
| asteroids, and there were no known asteroids in that patch of sky
| at that time (didn't really expect any, as I would expect them to
| be causing a visible streak over the 10 minutes of exposure).
| Neat paper though!
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