To LASIK or Not

United Airlines pilot Steve Post had risen to the rank of captain, about a decade ahead of his peers. But like half of Americans, Steve was nearsighted. And like an increasing number of these people, he opted to undergo LASIK (Laser-Assisted In-Situ Keratomileusis) - a ten-to-fifteen-minute procedure that offers the promise of liberation from glasses and contact lenses. This year, an expected 2-million individuals in the United States are expected to go under the LASIK laser -- the most common elective surgery in the U.S.

Typical post-LASIK symptoms. U.S. Food and Drug Administration chart.

In May 2000, Steve had the operation done at The LASIK Center in Tucson, Arizona. University of Arizona chief of ophthalmology, Dr. Robert Snyder, personally performed the surgery.

Now Steve is out of a job and has $4-million more in his pocket -- some for which will go to charity. But not all the money in the world will help Steve get his life back on track. "The bottom line is that no matter what the amount of the money, my career basically is gone and no jury award will bring it back," says Steve.

Steve's award is the latest recorder-breaker for a LASIK lawsuit. With 5-percent of patients reporting worse vision after the procedure, it will not be the last: 200 LASIK lawsuits are in the courts. Just last November, a Kentucky woman proved her LASIK case to the tune of $1.7 million, and a New York man received $1.2 million in compensation the year before.

Steve's team of attorneys presented before the court an argument typical in these lawsuits: his client was not a good candidate for surgery and the procedure should not have been done. Steve has especially large pupils when dark adopted; LASIK tends to destroy night-vision in these patients. The attorneys argued that accurately measuring the pupil diameter in dim light would have screened-out Steve as a candidate for LASIK. Attorney Ted Schmidt says, "The problem is, they should have never done it in the first place on Steve - he was not a proper candidate. And because of his occupation - which required him to fly planes at night - he should have had a very specialized screening. But they didn't even consider that."

During the trial, the LASIK Center's counter-argument was to deny that Steve's damaged vision was due to pupil size. "What happened was due to spherical aberrations in the eyes, that can be increased by the LASIK procedure," said Dr. Snyder. "Every patient has some degree of aberration, but there is no way to know in advance how significantly it will be increased by LASIK. That differs in every patient."

Jeff Campbell, an attorney representing the LASIK Center, puts the onus on the patient: "Steve Post was aware of the risks involved in LASIK, the possible outcomes were known to him and he elected to go ahead with it."

Whatever the cause, this story should give pause to amateur astronomers considering LASIK to improve their celestial viewing.

More information:

The Arizona Daily Star; May 10, 2002; Local News: "Damaging eye surgery brings $4M"

Eleven and Eleven Makes 39

The "King of the Planets" has once again been crowned the "Moon King." Jupiter's ascension to the "moon throne" is decisive: eleven new moons were recently discovered, by ground-based imaging, bringing the Jovan planet's total to 39. This dethrones Saturn, which has 30 known moons.

All the new satellites are 2- to 4-km in diameter and have irregular orbits: opposite the parent planet's direction of rotation and highly elongated. While nothing is known about the surface and composition of the satellites, their orbits suggest they are captured asteroids -- from when the planet was still forming. Only a scant eight of Jupiter's 39 moons have regular orbits: that includes the four largest ones, discovered by Galileo Galilie. In contrast, Saturn has a proportionally larger quantity of regular moons -- 17 of 30.

A new Jupiter moon glides against background stars. U. of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy

The discoveries were made on images taken in December 2001, with the 3.6-meter Canada-France-Hawaii telescope. Orbital confirmation was made with the University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter telescope. The same University of Hawaii based-team had announced a previous batch of 11 new Jupiter satellites in 2000. 

More information:

NASA/JPL; May 17, 2002; Press Release: "Astronomers Discover 11 More Small Moons of Jupiter"

Long-Distance Programming Job

V'Ger artist concept. NASA

Far beyond the known planets, the  Voyagers are poised to enter interstellar space when they make the historic crossing of the heliopause boundary

The twin Voyager mission to the outer planets was launched 25-years ago and is now over. But since  the Voyager's are still healthy, the intrepid vehicles are now on an extended mission, dubbed: Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM). VIM is attempting to chart the heliopause boundary, where the solar winds and solar magnetic fields meet the interstellar medium.  This is not a firm boundary. It moves back and forth like the tides, dependent on solar conditions. But recently, in order to continue toward the new goal, the quarter-century-old Voyager 1 needed some spare parts.

In the last two years, Voyager 1's attitude-control system has been acting-up. The problem was traced to an analog-to-digital converter used by the ship's electronics, to orient the craft in space. But how does one swap parts on an object 12.5-billion-km from Earth -- the furthest-out man-made object? Simple: Voyager 1 carries a backup converter. But due to Voyager's design, activating this component would also activate a backup Sun sensor and star tracker.

The Voyager team at JPL was very cautious about switching on the backups: they had not been tested since 1980! With round-trip radio communications time of 24-hours, any errors during the switchover had to be anticipated. So they carefully reprogrammed Voyager 1 to switch on the backups for evaluation and then return to the original systems. This was the most distant reprogramming job ever carried out.

The caution was a good call: the system erroneously locked onto the Sun during the switch. Voyager 1 was reprogrammed to avoid this mistake, and the final system change over and calibration was made. The backup system was fully calibrated on April 1, 2002, and the original system is still available should the backup fail. This result gives the Voyager ground-team confidence should other systems need to be activated.

Both Voyager spacecraft have adequate power and communication capabilities to explore space for another 20-years.

More information:

NASA/JPL; April 8, 2002; Spotlight: "Voyager Maintenance from 7 Billion Miles Away"