Cone work in progress

[MarkS]

Look at this thing here (in the animation of course). It is definitely moving.

How interesting!  You're right - its apparent position is definitely shifting.  I wonder what's going on?

Mark

[MarkS]

It's definitely a star - I've identified it here:


http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=Cl*+NGC+2264+LBM+205&NbIdent=1&Radius=2&Radius.unit=arcmin&submit=submit+id

I wonder if it is relatively nearby so we are seeing parallax?  However, I can't work out how to find its distance in the database.

Mark

[Mac]

I wonder if it is relatively nearby so we are seeing parallax?

Nope.
The closest star Proxima centauri has a paralax of 0.76 arc seconds, but thats over the distance of twice our orbit radius( 186 AU),
so for that object to offer paralax over such a short distance it will have to be very very close to us.

You said that the animation was over a period of one month, so roughly speaking that gives us a base line of 186/6  which is 31 AU = 4637534001 ~ 4600000000km (I Know its not exact due to the orbit being circular and i've taken it as a straight line averaged out over the 6 months that it takes to go from one side of the orbit to the other.)

Looking at your image it's 718 pixels wide and assuming that the object has moved say 4~5 pixels (hard to correctly measure from the animation)
The image is 31.5 x 35 arc mins which gives a pixel scale of 2.63 arcsecs / pixel.
So the object has moved between 10 & 13 arc secs in 1 month so that object is either very very very close, or probably a very very fast moving binary (more then lightly) or a slow moving asteroid.

Assuming it is parallax it would give us an angle over the 6 months maximum movement of say 10~13 * 6 ~ 60 ~ 78 average of say 70. arc secs

Extrapolating.
d(pc (parsec)) = 1/p(arc sec)
d = 1/70
= 1/70 * 3.26 ly (1 parsec)
= 0.046 ly
= 0.046 * 9.46 x 10E13 km
= 4.3x10E12 Km


pluto is 7.5x10E9 km

Or in laymans terms. Pluto is 4 light hours away. This object is (8760(hours in  a year) * 0.046) 402 light hours away or 100 times further.

BY JOVE I DO BELIEVE MR (LUCKY) SHELLY HAS FINALLY DISCOVERED THE MISSING PLANET SAID TO BE ORBITING BEYOND PLUTO. 

Still worth perusing though to see if it is a binary star or a slow moving asteroid.

Mac.

[JohnP]

'kin hell Mac think you deserve another Astro degree for that response....