Tonight, for the first time, I was to conduct a laser night from headquarters- I showed up for the 4 pm meeting where we all get on the same page and the observers explain what they will be looking at and why...

Terrible weather on the summit prevented the shutter of the telescope from being opened- I waited in the K2 ops room with the observers... we talked a bit on various topics and finally I said 'Seems like there is a bit of a scandal in astronomy...' The observers immediately knew what I was talking about... We discussed it.

I am willing to give Ortiz some benifit of the doubt, but it really doesn't look good, and Ortiz's silence is making it look worse. The question really is just how much did Ortiz get from the web site, and how much were his own observations... At a minimum Ortiz should have acknowledged the fact that he accessed that data.

While it is true that this would not be an issue if Dr. Brown had announced his observations immediately, he in no way did anything wrong by keeping it a secret- it was a calculated gamble.

If you make a discovery like this you can announce it immediately and be assured status as discoverer- but once its announced EVERYONE can study the object. The other route you can take is to hold off on announcing your discovery and study the object so that when you make your announcement you will not only get credit for the discovery, you will go down in the literature as the researcher that 'wrote the book' on the subject.

I was surprised by the 'secrecy' in astronomy at first- but now I understand it... Astronomers have to fight for telescope time and when they get it they may end up losing the time to weather (like tonight) or other factors.

Ortiz, at the very least, has some explaining to do.