2003 EL61: Encyclopedia II - 2003 EL61 - Discovery controversy

2003 EL61 - Discovery controversy

José Luis Ortiz Moreno, an astronomer at the Sierra Nevada Observatory in Spain, and colleagues Francisco José Aceituno Castro and Pablo Santos-Sanz announced the discovery of the object on July 25, 2005, when they re-analysed observations they had made on March 7, 2003. They then scoured older archives (a process known as precovery) and found the object in images dating back to 1955. Ortiz's group announced their discovery on July 27, 2005, and it was published two days later by the MPC.

A Caltech team consisting of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz had been observing the object for half a year, but had not yet made the data public. Brown et al. initially supported giving Ortiz and his group credit for the discovery, but withdrew support when they found reason to suspect that Ortiz may have used discovery data that Brown's team had made publicly available on the web.

A week before Ortiz's discovery, on July 20, Brown et al. had published an abstract of a report they intended to use to announce the discovery, in which the object was referred to by the internal code name K40506A. Typing this code into internet search engines allowed anyone to find the observation logs of Brown's group, including the observed positions of the object. Third-party web server logs indicated that the page in question had been accessed by an IP address used by computers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía where Ortiz's group worked. Brown's group accused Ortiz's group of a serious breach of scientific ethics and asked the Minor Planet Center to strip them of discovery status. [1]

Ortiz later admitted he accessed the internet telescope logs, downloading the relevant information a day before making his announcement, but denied any wrongdoing. He concedes that it was Brown's team that had discovered the object.

On July 29, 2005, shortly after the Ortiz discovery announcement, Brown's group announced the discovery of another Kuiper belt object, 2003 UB₃₁₃, which is more distant and is thought to be larger than the planet Pluto. The announcement was made earlier than planned, at the urging of Brian Marsden of the Minor Planet Center, to forestall the possibility of that discovery leaking out as well.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Discovery controversy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki