424 research outputs found
Call Me Caitlyn: Making and making over the 'authentic' transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture
A conception of transgender identity as an ‘authentic’ gendered core ‘trapped’ within a mismatched corporeality, and made tangible through corporeal transformations, has attained unprecedented legibility in contemporary Anglo-American media. Whilst pop-cultural articulations of this discourse have received some scholarly attention, the question of why this 'wrong body' paradigm has solidified as the normative explanation for gender transition within the popular media remains underexplored. This paper argues that this discourse has attained cultural pre-eminence through its convergence with a broader media and commercial zeitgeist, in which corporeal alteration and maintenance are perceived as means of accessing one’s ‘authentic’ self. I analyse the media representations of two transgender celebrities: Caitlyn Jenner and Nadia Almada, alongside the reality TV show TRANSform Me, exploring how these women’s gender transitions have been discursively aligned with a cultural imperative for all women, cisgender or trans, to display their authentic femininity through bodily work. This demonstrates how established tropes of authenticity-via-bodily transformation, have enabled transgender to become culturally legible through the wrong body trope. Problematically, I argue, this process has worked to demarcate ideals of ‘acceptable’ transgender subjectivity: self-sufficient, normatively feminine, and eager to embrace the possibilities for happiness and social integration provided by the commercial domain
A Transiting Planet of a Sun-like Star
A planet transits an 11th magnitude, G1V star in the constellation Corona
Borealis. We designate the planet XO-1b, and the star, XO-1, also known as GSC
02041-01657. XO-1 lacks a trigonometric distance; we estimate it to be 200+-20
pc. Of the ten stars currently known to host extrasolar transiting planets, the
star XO-1 is the most similar to the Sun in its physical characteristics: its
radius is 1.0+-0.08 R_Sun, its mass is 1.0+-0.03 M_Sun, V sini < 3 km/s, and
its metallicity [Fe/H] is 0.015+-0.04. The orbital period of the planet XO-1b
is 3.941534+-0.000027 days, one of the longer ones known. The planetary mass is
0.90+-0.07 M_Jupiter, which is marginally larger than that of other transiting
planets with periods between 3 and 4 days. Both the planetary radius and the
inclination are functions of the spectroscopically determined stellar radius.
If the stellar radius is 1.0+-0.08 R_Sun, then the planetary radius is
1.30+-0.11 R_Jupiter and the inclination of the orbit is 87.7+-1.2 degrees. We
have demonstrated a productive international collaboration between professional
and amateur astronomers that was important to distinguishing this planet from
many other similar candidates.Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures, accepted for part 1 of Ap
XO-3b: A Massive Planet in an Eccentric Orbit Transiting an F5V Star
We report the discovery of a massive (Mpsini = 13.02 +/- 0.64 Mjup; total
mass 13.25 +/- 0.64 Mjup), large (1.95 +/- 0.16 Rjup) planet in a transiting,
eccentric orbit (e = 0.260 +/- 0.017) around a 10th magnitude F5V star in the
constellation Camelopardalis. We designate the planet XO-3b, and the star XO-3,
also known as GSC 03727-01064. The orbital period of XO-3b is 3.1915426 +/-
0.00014 days. XO-3 lacks a trigonometric distance; we estimate its distance to
be 260 +/- 23 pc. The radius of XO-3 is 2.13 +/- 0.21 Rsun, its mass is 1.41
+/- 0.08 Msun, its vsini = 18.54 +/- 0.17 km/s, and its metallicity is [Fe/H] =
-0.177 +/- 0.027. This system is unusual for a number of reasons. XO-3b is one
of the most massive planets discovered around any star for which the orbital
period is less than 10 days. The mass is near the deuterium burning limit of 13
Mjup, which is a proposed boundary between planets and brown dwarfs. Although
Burrows et al. (2001) propose that formation in a disk or formation in the
interstellar medium in a manner similar to stars is a more logical way to
differentiate planets and brown dwarfs, our current observations are not
adequate to address this distinction. XO-3b is also unusual in that its
eccentricity is large given its relatively short orbital period. Both the
planetary radius and the inclination are functions of the spectroscopically
determined stellar radius. Analysis of the transit light curve of XO-3b
suggests that the spectroscopically derived parameters may be over estimated.
Though relatively noisy, the light curves favor a smaller radius in order to
better match the steepness of the ingress and egress. The light curve fits
imply a planetary radius of 1.25 +/- 0.15 Rjup, which would correspond to a
mass of 12.03 +/- 0.46 Mjup.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures. Accepted by ApJ. Current version has several
small corrections as a result of a bug in the fitting softwar
XO-2b: Transiting Hot Jupiter in a Metal-rich Common Proper Motion Binary
We report on a V=11.2 early K dwarf, XO-2 (GSC 03413-00005), that hosts a
Rp=0.98+0.03/-0.01 Rjup, Mp=0.57+/-0.06 Mjup transiting extrasolar planet,
XO-2b, with an orbital period of 2.615857+/-0.000005 days. XO-2 has high
metallicity, [Fe/H]=0.45+/-0.02, high proper motion, mu_tot=157 mas/yr, and has
a common proper motion stellar companion with 31" separation. The two stars are
nearly identical twins, with very similar spectra and apparent magnitudes. Due
to the high metallicity, these early K dwarf stars have a mass and radius close
to solar, Ms=0.98+/-0.02 Msolar and Rs=0.97+0.02/-0.01 Rsolar. The high proper
motion of XO-2 results from an eccentric orbit (Galactic pericenter, Rper<4
kpc) well confined to the Galactic disk (Zmax~100 pc). In addition, the phase
space position of XO-2 is near the Hercules dynamical stream, which points to
an origin of XO-2 in the metal-rich, inner Thin Disk and subsequent dynamical
scattering into the solar neighborhood. We describe an efficient Markov Chain
Monte Carlo algorithm for calculating the Bayesian posterior probability of the
system parameters from a transit light curve.Comment: 14 pages, 10 Figures, Accepted in ApJ. Negligible changes to XO-2
system properties. Removed Chi^2 light curve analysis section, and simplified
MCMC light curve analysis discussio
Planetary Transits of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey- Candidate TrES-1b
The AAVSO compiled 10,560 CCD observations of the suspected exoplanet transit object TrES-1b covering seven complete transit windows, three windows of partial coverage, and coverage of baseline non-transit periods. Visual inspection of the light curves reveals the presence of slight humps at the egress points of some transits. A boot strap Monte Carlo simulation was applied to the data to confirm that the humps exist to a statistically significant degree. However, it does not rule out systemic effects which will be tested with campaigns in the 2005 observing season
On the Search For Transits of the Planets Orbiting Gl 876
We report the results of a globally coordinated photometric campaign to
search for transits by the P ~ 30 d and P ~ 60 d outer planets of the 3-planet
system orbiting the nearby M-dwarf Gl 876. These two planets experience strong
mutual perturbations, which necessitate use of a dynamical (four-body) model to
compute transit ephemerides for the system. Our photometric data have been
collected from published archival sources, as well as from our photometric
campaigns that were targeted to specific transit predictions. Our analysis
indicates that transits by planet "c" (P ~ 30 d) do not currently occur, in
concordance with the best-fit i = 50 degree co-planar configuration obtained by
dynamical fits to the most recent radial velocity data for the system. Transits
by planet "b" (P ~ 60 d) are not entirely ruled out by our observations, but
our data indicate that it is very unlikely that they occur. Our experience with
the Gl 876 system suggests that a distributed ground-based network of small
telescopes can be used to search for transits of very low mass M-stars by
terrestrial-sized planets.Comment: currently 17pp w/Figs, 10 figures; to appear in Astrophysical Journal
article December 2006 v653n
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