Showing Tag: "asteroid" (Show all posts)

Projects for 2009

Posted by Mark Ashley on Thursday, January 1, 2009, In : Miscellaneous

It was a cold but dull New Year's Eve, no chance of leaving my equipment imaging whilst we partied. So what do I want to have achieved this time next year? After a bit of thought, here's a list of 10 projects for 2009. Let's see how many I complete over the coming months. Happy New Year!

1. Capture Saturn's rings edge on

I've been constructing a montage of Saturn over the last few years as the rings close. In 2009 the rings finally close and I can add to that montage. In addition, as Saturn is ...
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136199 Eris - definitely located this time!

Posted by Mark Ashley on Tuesday, December 30, 2008, In : Unusual targets

In late November and early December I imaged the dwarf planet Eris on several nights. Using Cartes du Ciel to help me pinpoint where she should be and the apparent movement of a faint object over the different nights I was fairly confident I had located the magnitude 18.7 dwarf planet. Here's my earlier post.

On the 28th December I tried again. With clearer skies I was able to image for longer to improve the signal-to-noise ratio. I'd also downloaded the Hubble Guide Star Catalogue to allow Ca...

Got it! 400m lump of rock speeding past the Earth

Posted by Mark Ashley on Sunday, December 28, 2008, In : Asteroids & Comets

On 23rd December the asteroid 2008 EV5 passed within 8.4 lunar distances of the earth. Its size (thought to be around 400m based on radar observations) and its orbit has led to it being designated a potentially hazardous object by the Minor Planet Centre (MPC).

Unfortunately 23rd December was cloudy in my location so I had to wait. When a clear night presented itself on Boxing Day, there was a problem with my ephemeris predicition and I missed my target! Finally, using emphemeris from the JPL ...

Asteroid 9 Metis drifting through Aries

Posted by Mark Ashley on Thursday, December 18, 2008, In : Asteroids & Comets

Here is a short sequence showing 9 Metis nudging northwards across the southerly regions of Aries last night, the 17th December 2008. There are 3 frames in the sequence, 10 minutes apart, each frame comprising a 60 second exposure. The motion isn't spectacular - I worked out that its motion would be about 2' in 10 hours, so you may struggle to detect 4-5" of drift in the elapsed 20 minutes of this sequence.