Worse than the HEB parking lot.
First I was trying to chase down anything I could find about that double-helix nebula the Spitzer watched a while before it died. There’s almost nothing about it I can find aside from the little bits and pieces just before Spitzer went south. That helix nebula arrangement perpendicular to the galactic plane almost certainly says something fairly strange about magnetic field behavior in the vicinity of the galactic center. Or at least makes for an interesting postulate. But can a guy find out anything about it? Nada. Nada. Double-helix-nada.
But that got me trying to look at things happening out that way and it was no time at all I stumbled across those 2002 short-lived radio bursts from the neighborhood, GCRTJ1745-3009. http://tinyurl.com/3kd8v. But one of the articles about it mentioned in passing that part of the reason they couldn’t nail the source was all manner of things between here and there bending things every which way.
I happen to be fairly interested in Sagitittarius A, [Sgr A*] and S2. They’re in there pretty close. So I started checking to make sure Sgr A* and S2 weren’t being pushed around and bullied by neighbors getting into their personal space.
“Astronomers have been unable to observe Sgr A* in the optical spectrum because of the effect of 25 magnitudes of extinction between the source and Earth.” Osterbrock, Donald E. and Ferland, Gary J. (2006). Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active Galactic Nuclei (2nd ed.). University Science Books. ISBN 1-891389-34-3.
25 bags of trash lying around in the grader-ditch blocking the view. It’s no wonder nobody can see what’s going on in there. What ever happened to the DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS program to clean up all that garbage? Why don’t we have some jailhouse students out there cleaning things up?
But that ain’t all. A regular guy without a lot of fancy instruments and some parallax has another problem. There are a dozen or so regular stars bunched up standing in the way, too. HR this that and the other. TYC so-on-and-so-forth. And all manner of ICRF J174 radio source nonsense.
I’m thinking of writing a State Congressman about this if I can figure out who one is. Or maybe call the sheriff.
Old Jules
So Far From Heaven 
Are you smoking something?
Wait…am I smoking something?
Your post went right over my head. 🙂
Hi granny1947. My humor isn’t universally understood, nor appreciated. Thanks for coming by. Jules
Spitzer went south? When?
Michael: 2006, I’m thinking. A web search would be your resource on that one. Gracias, Jules
I did before commenting. Their mission page doesn’t mention any issues with the scope. Just wondering where you heard it from…
I did. Their mission page doesn’t mention any problems. Just wondering where you heard it from…
Hi Michael. Sorry to be so long getting back. I was searching for my original souce and this dialup takes forever navigating the sites. I couldn’t find what I was looking for, but I suspect now I misread something anyway. Here’s what the Wiki site says about it:
Spitzer Space TelescopeFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Spitzer Space Telescope
The Spitzer Space Telescope prior to launch
General information
NSSDC ID 2003-038A
Organization NASA / JPL / Caltech
Major contractors Lockheed Martin
Ball Aerospace
Launch date 2003-08-25, 05:35:00 UTC
Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida
Launch vehicle Delta II 7920H ELV
Mission length 2.5 to 5+ years
(8 years, 2 months and 25 days elapsed)
Mass 950 kg (2,100 lb)
Type of orbit Heliocentric
Orbit period 2 year
Location Orbiting the Sun
Telescope style Ritchey-Chrétien
Wavelength 3 to 180 micrometers
Diameter 0.85 m (2 ft 9 in)
Focal length 10.2 m
Instruments
IRAC infrared camera
IRS infrared spectrometer
MIPS far infrared detector arrays
Website http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/
References: [1][2]
The Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF) is an infrared space observatory launched in 2003. It is the fourth and final of the NASA Great Observatories program.
The planned mission period was to be 2.5 years with a pre-launch expectation that the mission could extend to five or slightly more years until the onboard liquid helium supply was exhausted. This occurred on 15 May 2009.[3] Without liquid helium to cool the telescope to the very cold temperatures needed to operate, most instruments are no longer usable. However, the two shortest wavelength modules of the IRAC camera are still operable with the same sensitivity as before the cryogen was exhausted, and will continue to be used in the Spitzer Warm Mission.[4]
Evidently it’s still operating in the warm mission on two modules. Thanks for calling it to my attention. Jules