Since I went on the Art Bell show, I've been getting 10 to 30 e-mails per hour! Most (90%) are positive letters thanking me for new information.

I have received many e-mails questioning the technical apects of this picture. Many are sure that I imaged this star or that star cluster. Or its a flaw in optics or electronics. I know what those things look like. I've been looking through telescopes for nearly 40 years. Some have even found out that I am quite a prankster and joker. True - I've been an entertainer on the radio for over 30 years. There's a big hint when I pull a prank - I don't sign my name. Here is my e-mail to a well meaning person who went over me with a fine tooth technical comb!!!.....

First of all, yes, the image is cropped a bit to save space. It was imaged in a 10" SCT (f6.3). It was imaged in a CCD with a field of about 7 by 5 arc minutes or about 1.4 arc seconds per pixel. The image of the object is about 10 pixels wide, or about 14 arc seconds. I did my rough and widely quoted calculations in my head, so let's go over how they went.

Initially, the thing reminded very much of Saturn. Not only in shape, but it was also about the same size as Saturn appears in my telescope. Since the "thing" is three times closer than Saturn and about the same visual size, it must be about three times smaller than Saturn.

Using a little more precision:

Saturn is about 9 AU* from the earth right now and is about 17 arc seconds wide--- so if this "thing" is currently about 3 AU from us and if it were as big as Saturn, it would be about 3 X 17 or 51 arc seconds wide. This "thing" was about 14 arc seconds wide. 51/14 is roughly 3... so 1/3 the size of Saturn. Saturn is nearly 10 ten times the diameter of the earth (actually 9.41 but we are simulating my rough calcs OK?) If the "thing" is 1/3 the size of something 10 times bigger than earth, that makes it over 3 times bigger than earth. Don't nickel and dime me to death with decimal points, like I said my calcs were in my head. This is exactly how they went and they are close. My initial excited off the top of my head estimate of its size was 3 or 4 times the size of the earth.

My telescope, the Meade LX-200, does not support a four pronged mirror support, which some people have suggested is the reason for the "flaw" or the "rings." I have never seen that "ring" or "spike" phenomenon in any star image I have ever taken. I have seen multiple rays from bright stars resembling an artist impression of the sun, but never the two pronged symetrical effect.

Shram

*An AU is an Astronomical Unit representing the distance from the Earth to the Sun - or about 93 million miles. Also, to explain the minutes and seconds. There are 60 minutes in one degree. The Sun and the Moon both are about half a degree wide in the sky, or 30 minutes. Of course, there are sixty seconds in one minute - the same as on our clocks.