February 2nd

The Flame nebula and Horsehead
This is a mosaic of two images. The Flame Nebula is 13x10 minutes, and the Horsehead is 20x10 minutes, all in Hydrogen Alpha



During the collection of images for the Flame, a satellite passed through the field of view.
Rather oddly, there are two star-like shapes on the image that are not present in any other frames.



A check on CalSky shows that a NOAA rocket went past Alnitak at the right time. The track is not exactly right for the mystery trail, and CalSky is usually very accurate.



















  
The Calsky image superimposed.

The track is not at the right angle, and displaced.













  



February 2nd









 C/2012 S1 (ISON)

This seemed harder to pick up than on the 15th Jan.
This animation is of two 5 minute frames taken 47 minutes apart.

There is a hint of a tail visible.








  


February 6th
M1 Crab Nebula

Sky conditions were poor, and although focus and guiding looked good, the later images did not have very round stars.
16 frames were taken, but only the first 9 go to making up this image.
9x10 minutes in Ha


15th February

Asteroid 2012 D14 flew close to the Earth. Closest approach was before the asteroid was visible from the UK, but at about 8pm D14 rose above the horizon.

Thick cloud hampered any views, but near 9pm a thinning in the cloud allowed a few images to be taken.

This animation shows three 20 second images.

A small galaxy ngc???? can be seen to the right of the first asteroid position.











    


Skies remained overcast until shortly after midnight, when a large clear spell arrived.
By this time D14 was receding rapidly.

This is a single 20 second image, taken at 00:26:34



A platesolve gives the coordinates as RA 13 19 09.91 DEC 78 48 30.5




These charts show the RA and DEC for the above image plotted with the predicted positions from the Ephemeris.
The slight discrepancy could be due to error in the computer clock, or perhaps uncertainty in the asteroid trajectory.
Nevertheless, the asteroid was close to where it was expected, and the pointing accuracy of the
ASA DDM60 mount made the task of capturing it quite easy.



Update: The published ephemeris is now different. Obviously the asteroid's parameters have been refined after further observations.
The new graphs show better agreement.



A sequence of 20 second exposures. Stacked with DeepSkyStacker using 'Maximum' stacking.



A video of the flyby

27th February

IC443 Jellyfish nebula

Poor sky.
Only 3 frames taken to go with 5 from the 17th Feb.
All 10 minutes in Ha