current scores
7 IMO
7 Arneb
7 AstroRockHunter
6 Grand Vizier
5 Eroica
5 ToSeek
1 A Thousand Pardons
0 Moose

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I'll take Arneb's answers for 2 through 8, but replace 1 with

1.
186,282 & 794,102,441,740,237,015,827,567/ 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles per second

following the question's requirement that it be a proper fraction in lowest terms.

I also like Arneb answer for 5.e, terrestrial, but I accepted stop because I used it myself

current scores
7 IMO
7 Arneb
7 AstroRockHunter
7 Grey
6 Grand Vizier
5 Eroica
5 ToSeek
1 A Thousand Pardons
0 Moose

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Well, I was going to say Glauke, before Iapetus came up. The Voyager thing is me wanting to be different and handwaving it. I may have to withdraw this claim, however, see later...

Firstly, unlike Pioneer 10/11, the Voyagers are 3-axis stabilised.

Secondly, they have to be oriented to keep that high-gain antenna pointing roughly at Earth (though the beam-width must be quite large). So allowing for Earth shuttling back and forth in its orbit, it is possible that they are rotating very slowly indeed - most of the time.

But (after searching for constant spin rates in vain on JPL's site, which suggests no constant spin component):

Voyager 30-year plan

Which may well disqualify them, unless a once per 3 months roll counts as a 90 day rotation period

One thing seems clear, though, and that is that they are still 3-axis stabilised - I'm sure it might have been possible to move to spin-stabilisation if propellant depletion or gyro failure seemed imminent.

Make of it what you will

A further thought suggests that if the question referred to rotational status at the precise time the question was framed, there may well be a number of spacecraft with effectively zero rotation (Hubble, Spitzer, just about any space observatory) - unless they are in the middle of a pointing maneouvre, this is likely to be the case.

That should be verifiable, of course, but I have got a life, so...

[Edited to add:]

If an objection is that some spacecraft components are rotating fast (the Voyagers do have gyros), then I must now cite Earth as the slowest rotator - tectonic plate movement, of course

Always good to learn something new, thx.

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Fin
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A Thousand Pardons wrote:

How can I have the same score as IMO??? I did change one answer!!!

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I don't ask stupid questions. I just make stupid statements!!!

Let me check something. I'm keeping my answer to question 1, but my answers to questions 2 through 8 are now:

2. Sunday
3. Monday
4. Tuesday
5. Wednesday
6. Thursday
7. Friday
8. Saturday

I believe there are cases where, inspired by the reasoning behind a creative answer (or perhaps just sufficiently amused by it), A Thousand Pardons will accept that answer, but is likely to still accept the originally intended answer as correct. Of course, it may also be that the question you changed is the wrong one, and your answer is still wrong.

I'll wait for that test. Return to using Arneb's answers for 2 through 8, and replace the answer for 1 with

186,282 & 39,937/100,584 miles per second

So which one are they short? #-o

Sun (in heliocentricity)
Earth (in Ptolemaic Geocentricity)
George (in pure eccentricity)

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Interesting strategy! Grey feints, then ducks inside of Arneb for the win on the final stage, beating out a strong field, including the Lance Armstrong of the Astro Challenge, Grand Vizier--the winner of #2. I'm also awarding 5 points to Lycus for his hard work on the BABB Photo Album.

final standings
8 Grey
7 IMO
7 Arneb
7 AstroRockHunter
6 Grand Vizier
5 Eroica
5 ToSeek
5 Lycus
1 A Thousand Pardons
0 George
0 Moose

Congratulations, Grey!

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1.
The exact speed of light in miles per second is

186282 and 39937/100584 miles per second. Calculating the fraction yields

0.397... followed by a 42-digit periodical segment, ...051220870118507913783504334685437047641772

I hand-checked that the fraction is indeed reduced and proper. I did that dividing 39937 by every prime number up to 199 by hand (you see, ahem, I am not a programmer ops: )

AND NOW I SEE THAT SOMEONE WON WHILE I WAS COMPOSING THE POST

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Non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem.

The earth is still rotating a bit faster than once every 24 hours
Perhaps I've made a mistake. Which answer did you change?
It was the head fake, wasn't it?

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Head fake? (Sorry, linguistically challenged)

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What a comparison! Thanks, I'm going to dine out on that. Sorry for not trying harder this time, but just wait for next year

Oh, and my congratulations to the winner!

A little fast this one, ATP, just over a day. Seem to remember #2 taking over a week, must go check. Maybe they should be 6-monthly, if you can be bothered making up new questions - or maybe some of the rest of us should have a go...

[Edited once for spelling]

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Fin
Skep-ti-cult® member #488-28303-790

Head fake Sounds good to me! And speaking of dining out, the contest got over quick enough that I can have it tonight--lobster burger ala milli360, black calamari cigars, pepper-stuffed mushrooms and saffron potato crisps. Homebrew IPA. I'd be drooling, but I've already started on the IPA.

I was surprised that #1 took the longest--probably snuck under the radar. The answer is 186282 39937/100584 of course, as Grey and Arneb have verified. It's a non-terminating repeating decimal otherwise--and none of the other answers were exact. It's a curious consequence of the meter being defined exactly in terms of the speed of light, and the inch in terms of the centimeter, I think.

The two scales of Libra, Zubenelgenubi (the southern claw), and Zubeneschamali (the northern claw) obviously belong to their neighbor, Scorpius.

The levels of darkness I had as civil twilight, nautical twilight, astronomical twilight, and night, although I accepted Eroica's way-specific answer, as did everyone else. The common modes of telescope tracking speeds are sidereal, King, solar, lunar, and terrestrial--not all scopes have them, and some have more. Respectively, they're used for tracking the stars, stars near the horizon, the sun, the moon, and your neighbors.

My original order for the planets had Mars getting brighter than Jupiter, but I see that Mars was -2.9 in August of 2003, when it was so close, whereas Jupiter also gets that bright. Since no one disputed it, I accepted it.

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Since you mentioned it....


From.... here ...
However, other sites show Mars at -2.91 and Jupiter at a max. of -2.94.

It may depend on wether it is a cloudy day on Mars during ideal opposition. [edit: I suppose a flare off Mars Express counts too. :wink: ]

So I'll suggest...
Earth
Venus
Mars / Jupiter
Mercury
Saturn
Uranus

[sorry Moose :P ]

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

When I noticed that nobody had seemed to realize the specific nature of the first question, even though you had specifically mentioned it in a separate post, I figured I'd be able to let everyone else do the work, and then sneak in under the wire. That worked well, since I was pretty busy at work, so I couldn't take much time for research today.

After all that cleverness, though, I almost blew it by assuming that the decimal expansions given were exact. I realized that couldn't be true almost immediately (thinking about the definitions of the meter and the inch, just as you say), but couldn't get back to post again until a bit later. Fortunately, nobody else figured it out until I had a chance to come back and correct the answer myself. I posted the one check, just to confirm that I was indeed on the right track, but I'd worked out the exact answer before you responded, and I was about to leave work and drive home, so I figured I'd better just post the answer, since surely someone else would pick up the clue otherwise!

You'll have to tell me what's for dinner, so I can make it here, too! :wink:

You know, I was thinking that the questions must be getting easier, but reflecting on it more, I'm pretty sure you all are just getting smarter.
Yeah, that was what I was picking up. I think Mars outshown Jupiter at the time of the now infamous "big as a full moon" approach, but Jupiter gets brighter than that at other times--but just barely.
Sorry about that. We finished it off just before Laguna Beach started. Things are fast this year.

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I ought to post to say I've been watching this for a couple days, but I've been too busy to participate. Thanks for the heads-up, though, ATP, and congrats Grey!.