Congratulations to Eamonn Ansbro

Congratulations Eamonn on obtaining your PhD !

I always admire people who complete PhD's over a long time (part time say). It is harder to keep up the motivation and there are more distractions. Having been there myself many years ago but doing it full time, I could not imagine how hard it must be to spend so many years working on achieving this goal.

I always remember a presentation on the qualities people needed to complete successful PhD's. It only comes down to one quality. It's not how smart you are or how many hours you spend on it-sheer determination and bloody-mindedness to finish is the key trait.

Well done ! We can call you Dr Ansbro now

Many congratulations Eamonn!

Congratulations on this achievement. Thank you for showing me your observatory facilities recently and the research you carry out. You have an amazing set up, in particular the big telescope. The performance of that telescope images are incredible. I appreciate your dedication and the huge amount of time to carry out research in Ireland.

What surprised me is that you can rival professional astronomers at leading edge Solar System research. The difference is that you not only designed and built your own telescope but you used it to carry out a large scale survey in regions that others were not surveying, and then you mathematically modelled all your results. I understand that astronomers these days don’t even know how to use telescopes, never mind building one.

I am fascinated about the possibilities of finding a Planet X or Brown Dwarf in our Solar System. I understand that you have been working on this project for many years. I also understand from the last time talking to you that you are closing on the region where it might be. I would love to know more about this project as it unravels. What do you plan to do now after bringing this to a successful conclusion.

Your inspiration has influenced me to take up astrophotography. After doing a lot of terrestrial photography, I am hooked on astrophotography.

Joe

Thank you for all the kind words.
I am proud to be an amateur astronomer amongst peers. Amateur astronomy provides a lot of freedom when it comes to research topics. When I proposed this project to Open University, they thought it was highly ambitious to carry this survey out, never mind trying to find a large planet in our Solar System. The 3 supervisors came to my observatory in County Roscommon to verify that I had a telescope that could carry out this survey. I did test runs for them to prove that I could do the research.

In answer to some of your interest in the PlanetX or Brown Dwarf research I'll give a brief background.

The main part of the research was the wide scale survey that got down to 22nd magnitude. This survey was complete showing that there are more large bodies at high ecliptic latitudes.
The other research is still going on as regards finding a Planet X or Brown Dwarf at the edge of the Solar System.

This research identified a statistical clumping in the sky of comets with periods longer than one million years based on 100 comets. The research hypothesised this could have been caused by a large planet of a few Jupiter masses orbiting the Sun.

The search for the ‘Planet’ was carried out over four years using the 0.9m telescope at Kingsland Observatory to 22.7 Sloan i band magnitude when using deconvolution image processing. These observations were performed in September and April in order to detect any parallax of a distant object. Previous images were taken using the 1.2m Schmidt telescope at Siding Springs, Australia which identified 43 suspect planets. Kingsland went down to fainter magnitudes to verify or refute these previous targets. Other survey images in infrared have also been used to possibly identify a target planet. However, further research using other recent survey material is being carried out in the same area where the suspect planets were. One suspect planet has been identified with the right characteristics based on expanding some parameters.

There will be a scientific paper coming out this year which will show the results.

Eamonn

Hi Eamonn,
What is the expected size of this planet or Brown Dwarf? Any idea of the distance?

Mike

Hi Eamonn
What is the expected revolution of Planet X?
What colour? and could there be planets orbiting it?

Joe