Dark Star Rising Second Edition (Pebbles in The Sky)

I would like to dedicate this, my first book, to my lovely wife Susan.  Not only did she let me use her name as one of my main characters, but she stood behind me when I doubted myself and was not sure I had the resolve to finish this project.  She is my wife, mate, critic, and most importantly, my best friend.

Dark Star Rising

Second Edition

Chapter 1

March 11
th
, 2016

Pasadena, California

Peter Rockwell rubbed his eyes, and tried to clear his vision.  He had been studying images and spectroscopic data for over fifteen hours today
. The coffee, energy drinks, and candy bars were no longer holding back his need for rest.  He sighed and stood to stretch his stiff neck and back.  Such was the life of a graduate student he thought to himself.  Peter was a graduate student in Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology, or Cal Tech as it was commonly known.  He was in the midst of that angst that all graduate students must deal with, the gathering of data to support his thesis paper.

  He grimaced and shook his head as he read the title of his paper; “The Inconsistencies of Doppler Shift and Spectrographic Analysis on Distant Galaxy Infrared Observations Due To Interspersed Interstellar Dust Clouds.”  What a mouth full that title was, and this is the bright idea I had for my
research he thought to himself.  He sighed as he slumped back into his chair and felt nothing but frustration as he looked at the pile of photographs and spectrographic data charts in front of him.  He had studied the data and related images for so long he could see them with his eyes shut. As tired as he was, he knew that the completion of his research paper was why he was here attending college in Southern California so far from his childhood home of North Carolina.

Peter let his mind wander back to memories of his childhood.  Peter had grown up in the small community of Warne, North Carolina.  It was a common joke where he was from that the small community of Warne was two hours from anywhere. The nearest cities
to Warne were Asheville, Atlanta, Chattanooga, and Knoxville.  All four of those cities were about two hours away.  Needless to say, growing up in the southern Appalachian area during his youth meant spending a lot of time outdoors camping, fishing, hiking, and looking at the star filled skies that were unpolluted with the lights of the big cities.

The stars had always had a special fascination for Peter.  He had spent many hours as a boy looking at the moon, stars, and the solar system though an old set of binoculars while he was out camping. On his tenth birthday, he had received his most prized possession.  His grandfather had bought him a one hundred and thirty millimeter Orion telescope.  From that point onward, he was hooked, and studying the
universe laid out in the night sky became his passion.   When the weather permitted, he spent every possible moment out in a field behind his house with his telescope looking up at the sky.  There were countless nights when his mother had to come outside and drag him in shivering and half frozen when he had lost track of time looking at distant celestial objects in the clear cold night skies of the North Carolina winter.  For it was in that winter sky, clear of moisture and humidity, unpolluted with city lights, that he could really see the immensity of the universe above all around him.

As
Peter got older, he added reading to his passion of looking at the night sky.  He read every book and article he could find on astronomy, science, and the space programs of all the nations of the world.  He developed a habit of following the news on every space probe, satellite, and discovery that was made and published.  Instead of posters of sports heroes, bands, or scantily clad female models, the walls of his room were covered with photographs of rockets, newspaper articles about satellites, and star charts.

When Peter entered high school, he would probably have been categorized as a nerd by his school aged peers, but his early puberty and above average physical size protected him from much of the hazing and bullying that a smaller boy would have had to endure.  It also presented somewhat of a quandary for him.  His friends, neighbors, and especially the coaches at school, were constantly trying to recruit him for sports.  Peter had no interest in any sport, so all his friends and acquaintances just ended up shaking their heads and trying to figure out why he did not use the physical gifts he was born with. “Why don’t you play football?” they would say to him, and “forget about all those books on stars and stuff.”  The teenage girls at school were constantly vying for his attention. Most of them would do anything to be seen out on a date with the best looking boy in school, but he was oblivious to it all. Peter’s eyes were always drawn to the sky.  The heavenly bodies that he was interested in did not reside on Earth. 

At the customary age of sixteen he obtained his driver’s license, but he did not use it to go out on dates with girls, socialize, and cruise around town in a car with his peers.  Peter discovered that Young Harris College, only about ten miles away from his home, had a small observatory with a sixteen inch
Schmidt Cassegrain telescope.  While his friends were out partying, his weekends were spent prowling around the college begging every chance he could to use the telescope there.  Since he all but haunted the observatory, he became good friends with several of the professors and student volunteers in the planetarium there on campus. 

Peter graduated from high school in 2008 with a three point nine four grade point average.  He applied to attend college at California Technical Institute.   Thanks to his grades and a letter of recommendation from the head of the Mathematics and Astronomy program at Young Harris College, who also happened to be an alumnus from Cal Tech, he received a scholarship offer and moved to the west coast to attend college at the school of his dreams.  He could have attended many different colleges, but the exciting
and determining factor for Peter’s choice, was the fact that Cal Tech was the home of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories.  JPL was the Mecca of astronomy as far as he was concerned.  The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL as it was referred to, was where all the space telescopes, such as the Hubble and Spitzer, were controlled from.  All the data was downloaded, analyzed and catalogued at JPL.

Moving up the ranks of students, Peter completed his undergraduate studies, then his Master’s degree, and then started work on his Doctorate.  That had brought him to where he found himself tonight, sitting up at two thirty in the morning, staring with blurry vision at the images and data that had him stumped.  Peter had been reviewing some old data from the now all but crippled Spitzer Space Telescope.  This telescope, unlike the Hubble, specialized in thermal imaging.  It was an infrared space observatory that had cost over a billion dollars
when it was built.  The telescope had performed its mission and had exhausted the last of its cryogenic coolant supply in May of 2009.  From that point onward it was reduced to only being able to conduct some minor observations and could do no more thermal imaging.  His thesis was centered on what he believed were inconsistencies in observations of distant galaxies that were formed soon after the “Big Bang” event that had formed the universe as it was known to man.  Studies of these distant galaxies gave insight to the formation, history, and structure of the known universe.  Unfortunately, it was now the year 2016, and it had been seven years since the Spitzer Space Telescope could take infrared images and that is where his problem lay.

Peter had a set of twenty three observations of the same distant galaxy over a period of about five years taken by the Spitzer.  The observations, spectrographic, and
doppler shift data did not match up and correspond with each other as they should. The basis of his research was that galactic dust clouds could greatly affect the accuracy of these observations and he had to be able to rule out other interfering factors or influences on the data.  The only other possible factors that could affect the data and images he was using included infrared light or thermal interference from another source.

  Peter was convinced
that he had chosen the correct data to provide support of his thesis except that there was a lingering issue of possible outside interference in every one of these studies that he wanted to use that had been made by the Spitzer.  The distant galaxy observations that he was basing most of his work on was in an area of space where there were no known infrared sources that could cause the discrepancies.  He had obtained deep field Hubble studies of the same area and there was just nothing there that should be causing the infrared interference he was seeing.  The only conclusion he could come up with that made sense was that there had to have been something wrong with the Spitzer’s infrared imager when it took these shots.  Peter had reviewed hundreds of other studies taken by the Spitzer, and not a single one of those studies showed the same problem with any infrared interference.  So, why did only this series of studies that he wanted to use have this artifact and not the others he pondered?

All twenty three studies that he had to reference his study on had a small area of thermal ...pollution, or interference, in the same exact area.  Forty five degrees from the top of the study field he was using there was a small, faint, but repeated indication of a thermal source that should not be there.  This could skew all his data and bring his whole thesis into doubt.  He had ruled out all possible sources, such as another Earth orbiting satellite, a wandering near Earth meteor, planet, etc. etc.  It was not a film defect, as the raw digital images transmitted by the Spitzer contained it also. The only possible explanation was that the Spitzer instrument was somehow receiving thermal interference from an external source, but why only on these studies?

The most perplexing issue was that the infrared interference artifact became worse with each study over the five years that the studies had been made.  On printed film, there was this faint thermal source that was getting stronger or brighter, but there was nothing there in space that could be causing the artifact.  He was stumped.  Something had to have been wrong with the Spitzer, and since it no longer was able to take infrared studies, it was not possible for him to inquire about having another study of this particular area performed.

Peter sorted through his stack of documents and data printouts and pulled up studies from the WISE and IRAS infrared satellites.  Studies by these telescopes in the same general area had discovered some previously unknown comets and asteroids but they did not have the sensitivity to show the detailed and accurate data that Spitzer had produced.  Neither of th
ose satellites had detected any thermal source in the area of question that the Spitzer had.  Like the Spitzer, both of those satellites were also now decommissioned in space and of no further use.  Peter picked up the data and images from the Wyoming infrared telescope that he had obtained.  That data had too much interference from the Earth’s atmosphere for the accurate readings he needed.  The SOFIA or airborne infrared telescope had the same issue as the Wyoming scope, too much interference from the Earth’s atmosphere.

So here he was
. Because his research was totally dependent on these Spitzer studies, it could be totally shot down because of this damned thermal artifact that was coming from somewhere.  Peter shook his head trying to clear his vision.  He was beyond just being tired and no longer able to think straight.  He wandered off to his bedroom and collapsed exhausted on his bed and fell right to sleep.

A few hours later Peter’s mind slowly extricated itself from the world of exhaustion, and dreams of stars, nebulas
, and dust clouds back into the world of light and noise.  “God, what is that awful noise?” was Peter’s first thought as his bloodshot eyes slowly opened.  His alarm clock was bleeping madly. He could hear the couple upstairs arguing again, a baby was crying somewhere. Someone was also beating on his door.  “What the hell?” he thought as he slammed his hand down to silence the alarm clock.   The clock was showing it was eight am.  “Who the hell is beating on my door at this time of morning?” he asked himself.