10th JanuaryC/2014 Q2 Comet LovejoyThis is now well placed in the northern hemisphere. 10 x100 minutes in luminance, kappa sigma clipining to remove stars ![]() LRGB version ![]() Stacked to show stars. A satellite messed up the 7th frame ![]() Stacked using "average". More detail in tail showing. ![]() I wondered how rapidly the tail of the comet would change over time. This is two images separated by 73 minutes: ![]() As can be seen, the tail is very different. This means that an image that hopes to show the tail well should be completed in quite a short time. Perhaps 15 minutes is a target to aim for. This would be 5 minutes each for RGB, so 5x60 seconds for each filter? 28th January Moon. 10x0,2 seconds, OIII filter ![]() A large asteroid (357439) 2004 BL86 travelled close to the Earth on 26th January at a safe distance of 1.2 million kilometres. Weather conditions prevented any images on the 26th, but a spell of clear sky on the 28th allowed some images to be captured. This animation shows the progress of the asteroid over a period of 17.5 minutes.
Astrometry The predicted position for the asteroid at 7:00:00pm was RA 09 48 04.7 DEC +53 07 08 An image started at 7:00:05 gave good agreement with RA 09 48 04.36 DEC +53 07 12.2 ![]() 31st January Asteroid 2004 BL86 is now 7,048,827 km away from the Earth. It is 325 metres in diameter, so this is equivalent to looking at a £1 coin at a distance of 477km. Consequently it is getting rather faint. This animation shows two 300 second exposures. ![]() The ASA DDM60 mount was instructed to track at the asteroid's speed. This shows the asteroid as a small dot amongst the trailed stars: ![]() |