WaveSoarer

That's excellent work.

That's fantastic.

Great work!

Well done Kerry! I'm really glad that your persistence paid off. The moon will be brightening the sky too and this, along with the dimming of Florence, won't have helped. Quite an achievement all told.

I've just been out again with the 100p (a great grab and go scope) and I could see Florence just moving up to be adjacent to delta del. A bit of cloud dodging tonight but it's still clearly visible.

Well done David. It was fairly tricky star hopping and a lot of toing and froing between the EP and Stellarium.

I've just been out with my 100p and I could easily see Florence with the 15 mm EP. The moon is making the sky distinctly milky but I could see it sweep past a mag 10.25 star despite this. Apart from the distraction of a cute little hedgehog it was good to watch it drift across the field stars for about an hour.

That's great goodricke1. I'm glad that you managed to get clear skies.

John, I thnk that our eyes are very good at perceiving even very small and slow movements. I found it easier when Florence was close to a group of stars or was in the direct line of a pair of stars. It was easier to see the movement when the alignment started drifting off.

I think that you'll be ok with the moon goodrick1. Florence was easy to spot with my 200p last night and I might have a go with the 100p tonight if it's clear.

Thanks for the comments and it seems that we've had similar viewing experiences. I like the sketch by the way Andrew.

After what seems like an age of inactivity, I took the advantage of the clear skies last night and got the telescope set up so that I could have an attempt at observing Florence. There had been a rain shower just before sunset and so the air was quite humid but at least the transparency was good - which was an advantage with the near to first-quarter moon on show. I had to wait a while until Florence was sufficiently high to clear the house and I then set up about trying to find it. The moon made the sky rather bright and so the finder could only really pick out the brightest of stars. I hopped from the bright Dabih and the double Algedi/6 Cap to Albali and from there followed the line of 6 Aqr and 7 Aqr down to 13 Aqr. At this stage I had to use the main scope (with a 15 mm EP) as the sky was just too bright to make the finder scope useful. Stellarium was then essential for the rest and a little bit of careful slewing of the scope showed Florence at the apex of a tight isosceles triangle with HIP 104826 and HIP 104795 at about 10:30 BST. These stars are mag 9.2 and mag 8.65 respectively and have a similar brightness at the EP to Florence, which Stellarium estimates to be mag 8.65. Sure enough, there was a stellar-like point of light in the correct place and over the period of a couple of minutes it was fairly obvious that the geometry of the triangle was changing. I was fortunate that Florence was close to these stars as the movement was really obvious and it made the identification really easy. Infact, even a short period of viewing showed the asteroid clearly moving. This was perhaps the most mesmerising aspect of the night's session as it's unusual to see such an obvious and rapid movement of an object. Anyway, I tracked Florence for a couple of hours until well after the moon had set by which time it had progressed quite a long way. Well worth the effort considering how small, and how far away, the asteroid is from us.

I'd be extremely grateful if you could let me know how you managed to load up the tracking information into Stellarium. I've had a quick look but I've not found Florence in the lists of objects.

We viewed from Stayton, Oregon, and, like Craney, we spent most of our time soaking things in just by observing. It was a fantastic event.

Those are brilliant images. We viewed the eclipse from Stayton, Oregon, and it was an incredible experience. These are beautiful images.