[Joe Keller]

"Dot update"

One of my five additional nearby starlike disappearing Sky Survey dots, is

"C11" (Jan 31 1987, SERC Red) Strasbourg "Aladin"
RA 11 18 00.41 Decl -8 01 57.7.

Assuming this is Frey and that my previous post is valid, I find with my IBM 486 "BASIC" program above, that Barbarossa should be on this 1987 plate at

11 18 03.006 -7 56 29.4.

There is a magnitude +19 star at

11 18 02.80 -7 56 21.8.

This star seems brighter relative to its neighbors, on this 1987 La Silla sky survey vs. the 1986 "UK Red" sky survey. Its R1 & R2 USNO-B catalog magnitudes are nearly equal, but the documentation doesn't reveal the relative influence of the two or three plates used to compute each magnitude. So, it might be a nonresolved conjunction, or (less likely) occultation.

My computerized Earth parallax correction uses the sun's apparent position. Barbarossa orbits the center of gravity of the solar system: including Jupiter & Saturn. Saturn was near quadrature with Barbarossa then, so its influence changed little between 1986 & 1987. On the other hand, Jupiter was nearly opposite Barbarossa. Jupiter's 30 degree motion in one year would subtract about 0.15s RA from Barbarossa's predicted apparent position in 1987, vs. 1986. So, only the predicted and observed Declinations of the star are significantly discrepant.

My very first discovered sky survey "Barbarossa" object, "C", lies 145" exactly S of the predicted position of Barbarossa. My pixel analysis of this object indicated that it is at least two different unresolved objects (the center of luminosity doesn't lie in the brightest pixel). Object C might be an unresolved conjunction of two of Barbarossa's inner planets. (Such "inner planets" appear on the A and B plates.) If so, then these planet(s) would need 6% the mass of Barbarossa, to move the center of gravity of the non-Frey, inner, portion of Barbarossa's system, 145*0.06/1.06 = 8" S. This would place the predicted Barbarossa at the coordinates of the observed star.