The Mysterious Planet Ziggy

1. The Mysterious Planet Ziggy Assignment 1 for ASTR1001.

2. The USS Drongo • You are the crew of the Starship USS Drongo. Launched by the Australian Space Agency in 2234AD, its 5 year mission is to explore distant parts of the universe. • Unfortunately, only two years into your mission, in an unfortunate incident caused by a drunken computer programmer and a bad tempered main computer, you crash landed on an unknown planet, in an unexplored corner of our galaxy. • You have decided to call this planet “Ziggy”

3. Your Mission • You are members of the Astrophysics Team on-board the USS Drongo. • Captain Howard has asked you to try and figure out as much as you can about the planet and solar system that you’ve been transported to. • Don’t waste time trying to figure out things about Ziggy: that’s the job for the exobiology and planetology teams. • Your mission is to study the night sky of Ziggy, and deduce whatever you can from it.

4. Planet Ziggy The USS Drongo Crash Landed Here.

5. A Strange World • Ziggy is a strange world. It has breathable air, and gravity 23% weaker than the Earth’s. • It is covered in pink grass-like organisms, with occasional giant orange plants that look like some cross between tree-ferns and cacti. • The “grass” is grazed by vast groups of what look like sabre-toothed rabbits: pink in colour with bright green spots. They appear to be carnivorous - several members of the USS Drongo’s xenobiology team have already been bitten.

6. Night Time • You (the astrophysics team) first ventured out 120 hours after the crash-landing. • It had been dark at the crash site for all those 120 hours - you hadn’t seen Ziggy’s sun (you know it has one - a fairly normal G-type star, because you saw it on the way down). • What you did see in the sky was many bright stars, and a large, bright, featureless silvery moon. It appeared twice as big as Earth’s moon, and about ten times brighter.

7. A view looking straight up.

8. Same view one hour later

9. Same view another hour later

10. The Moon’s Motion. • When you first landed, the moon was almost directly overhead, and looked like a full moon. • Since then, it had seemed to spiral out from the zenith (the point directly overhead). When you first went out, it was only 30 degrees above the horizon. • As it slowly spiralled away from the zenith, it had become less full. The brighter half always seems to point downwards, towards the horizon.

11. Zenith

12. When you first ventured out, it was doing complete circles around the sky, around 30 degrees above the horizon and dropping.

13. One week later. • You have now been on Ziggy for a week. • The Xenobiologists have identified a new carniverous species: they look rather like Koalas, but drop from the “trees” on top of other animal’s heads and then devour them. • Much progress has also been made in the astrophysics section. • Ziggy’s sun has still not risen, but Ziggy’s moon has set, making it much easier to see faint things in the sky. • The biggest surprise - two stars were recently spotted which appear to be doing something rather strange…

14. Initial View.

15. Same view one hour later

16. Same view another hour later

17. Assignment 1 • The goal of this assignment is to deduce as much as you can about Planet Ziggy, and its solar system. • You can work as individuals, or as a team, whichever you prefer. • You should hand in a report, explaining what you have deduced about this world, and the reasoning that led you to these deductions. If you work as a team, the whole team should hand in one collaborative report, listing the names of all team members. You will all receive the same mark.

18. Deadline. • The report is due at the start of the lecture on Tuesday 25th March, ie. by 10.05am. • The report should be no longer than 1200 words. • It can be handed in to me on paper at the lecture, or e-mailed to me using the WebCT course e-mail system. • The report should be written in the style of an “executive brief”, intended for Captain Howard. It should thus concentrate on the most important facts, and not digress unnecessarily into technical details.

19. No Competition • The reports will be marked on an absolute scale, not a relative scale - ie. I will happily give you all High Distinctions if I think you deserve it (or fail the lot of you…). • This means that you loose nothing by sharing your ideas with your classmates. • You should use the course bulletin board for this purpose - posting your ideas and questions there, for everyone to read. • To encourage this, anyone posting particularly brilliant ideas or probing questions on the bulletin board will win a bonus mark.

20. Bulletin Board • So - if you are stuck or baffled, look at the bulletin board and you may find the clue you are looking for. • If you come up with a good idea, post it there. But be quick - only the first person to post a particular idea can get credit for it. • If your posting is on behalf of a group of you, please place all your names on it. • This puzzle is too hard for any individual - it is only by pooling your ideas that you will get it out.