Asteroid Animations from Imaging Session on 11th Dec

[Mike]

Jeff had some data concerning the asteroids (minor planets) Ceres and Flora at the imaging session the other night. I thought it would be interesting to try and image them. I was pleased to find them and before we took the second images to get the animations we used Jeff's notes and I used The Sky 6 Pro to ascertain the positions of the asteroids and decide which of the dots on the screen they were. I was pleased that on the second image once we were able to blink compare them that our first assessments were correct and I was also impressed that The Sky was accurate.

Anyway here they are. The two images are taken 1 hour apart. You'll have to excuse the weirdness of the images. The second frames were taken after a meridian flip and the subsequent rotation and alignment has made the background noise go all weird.

Ceres





Flora

[Mike]

Oh by the way these were taken with the Starlight Xpress SXV-H9 on the ED80. They are just 10 second exposures.

[JohnP]

Mike - great animations - I'm sure this are looking for a bit of science to be done on them - I guess you can work out the Arcsec/ pixel of your imaging setup & from there calculate the number of pixels the asteroids shift in the hour & deduce the actual distance they have travelled & the speed they are moving at....

When can we have the answers please.....

John

[JohnP]

I've just checked & according to CCD Calc an ED80 & SX H9 gives you 2.2arcsec/pixel

[Mike]

Oooh I just wanted a pretty picture. I never thought of doing any science!

Yes, it is 2.2 arcsec/pixels. I used Ron Wodowski's CCD Calculator - http://www.newastro.com/newastro/downloads/ccdCalcFree.htm - to work out the image scale. Apparently 2 arcsecs/pixel is the optimum for asteroid astrometry so it's darn close.

I was actually hoping to get out last night and do a magnitude test experiment. Apparently you need to image lower than magnitude 17 to pick up any undiscovered asteroids as just about everything below mag 17 has been swept up by LINEAR and the other asteroid sweepers. Would be interesting to see what mag I could get down to with a 3 or 4 min exposure. Hey maybe that is a challange for all the cooled CCD owners - See how low can you go ?!

I will get the exact timings and positions of the objects from the FITs files over the weekend and work out it's speed and real distance travelled in that hour. The minor planets centre has all of the orbital data so i can use that. Would be something interesting to try I guess!! Keeps me off the streets.

[JohnP]

Well I did think of putting diffraction spikes on your picture - looks a bit boring without them. It'll be interesting to see your calculations verses the orbital data available... Jeepers...1 I need to be careful I'm starting to sound technical....!!!!! 

Cheers,  John

[Mike]

I actually tried last night to use astrometry on these images using both MaximDL and Astronometrica, but it failed to find the correct star field in both. MaximDL was having issues with the star databases, despite me downloading the complete GSC catalogue. I was trying to test out astrometry to see what the magnitude of the stars in the image and the asteroid were.


Ian, maybe you can explain how you've set up your database as you use PinPoint in MaximDL. I did what it said in the readme which was to create a TABLES and a GSC folder and put all the zip files in then uncompress them into seperate folders of the same name. Is that what you've done?

[Rocket Pooch]

Oooh I just wanted a pretty picture. I never thought of doing any science!

STONE THE HERETIC!

[Mike]

Careful! - The Forum Police will lock the post ! 

[Miriam]

Great images, Mike.
I'm just sorry I was too unwell to be there on Tuesday evening to see how you managed the imaging. 
I'm definitely getting left behind with this imaging business, but it's been too cold to venture out of the house.
I'll try to have a go at imaging Mars over Christmas (no pressure then!)

Miriam

[Tony G]

... Jeepers...1 I need to be careful I'm starting to sound technical....!!!!!

I remember not so long ago coming onto the forum and being able to understand what others were talking about 
I suppose this is my next step then.http://www.nafas.org.uk/.

Tony G

PS nice animations by the way.

[Ian]

http://www.nafas.org.uk/.

Oi Tony, we may be many things, but we're not a naf AS!

Do you think they do hard core flower arranging including Fireball sauce, tents, sheep poo and more mud than you can shake a Subaru Forrester at?

[Ian]

oh and cool pics Mike. It confirms two things, that I was looking at the right part of the sky when Jeff was patiently trying to get me follow his instructions and that he wasn't making it all up when I got there.