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Hi, I'm not sure of the best topic to post this in, but i think this is the right place.

Has anyone been observing Vesta recently? early this morning i decided to try spotting my first asteroid, it was tricky at first, especially being in a light polluted town but eventually i think i found it using the finder chart on Heavens above, I noticed there was a triangle of stars that pointed right to it, and that's what i could see in my binoculars. Then i set about to try and get a photo, which i managed to do. Now i will observe it and take further photos at different dates to see if its moving which will be conclusive that i have indeed found Vesta!

But in the mean time I would really like to know i have found it, so could someone take a look at my photo and maybe confirm its Vesta?

star-child-albums-astropics-picture12294-vesta.jpg

Many thanks

Jay

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Thanks for the confirmation, I am well pleased now!

@astroeddie, i discussed the stacking thing with someone at our recent south coast astronomers group and it sounds really good, but still sounds a bit complicated to me who is a complete novice when it comes to astrophotos, apparently there is some program i can download so i can do stacking but i find it quite daunting. but i will try it out sometime, i have nothing to loose after all, how would it actually improve my photos, would it make them less grainy? im thinking even a decent photo of vesta wont show it any more than just a faint star like object, but i can see why less exposure would be good because there would be less trailing then.

I will try for Neptune and Vesta in the same shot, although I'm not sure if my camera will pick it out, what magnitude is Neptune currently at, I may have actually got it in one of my other pics which i used less zoom on. I did get a Satellite and Vesta in one shot, a nice surprise! i guess it could have been a faint metoer but i recon its a satellite (Cosmos 2291 rocket) i checked heavens above and there was a satellite in the same location and time as the photo.

I am nr Southampton.

@Russ, yep this was from home, I also observed M13 and M31, and i was daft enough to attempt M51 now i know where to find it, no chance from here!

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Very nice :D

I will be looking to see Vesta when it comes to opposition later on in the summer when it will be something like 5.4 mag so just about naked eye brightness, although I doubt from Crewe but well withing range of binoculars.

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Star Child,

Download Deep Sky Stacker. Does everything for you.

Neptune is around +8 magnitude, about 6 or so degrees from Vesta, east ward.

If the ISO is at a high volume, then you images will be grainy, but you get fainter objects. ISO from between 400 -800 for finer detail. Doing this, you'll need to stack images. Try a shroud around your lens as you do with the scope. This'll elliminate any stray light.

Try and process in B&W, this 'll stop any redness/orange gloom appearing.

I'm by no means accomplished in astro-photo-thingiying. But this is what I've learnt.

Here's my Vesta .

382076550.jpg

Eddie

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  • 2 weeks later...

Here is the most recent pic of Vesta, i have marked its position where it was on my first photo, even though astroeddie confirmed i has Vesta, now i have photos showing it has moved so that's conclusive evidence that its Vesta!

post-19298-133877637968_thumb.jpg

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Very nice :)

I will be looking to see Vesta when it comes to opposition later on in the summer when it will be something like 5.4 mag so just about naked eye brightness, although I doubt from Crewe but well withing range of binoculars.

No time like the present! It's at 5.8 now, i dont think the extra .4 magnitude increase would make to much difference, its easy in binoculars, and its moving south so getting nearer to the horizon which means murk and light pollution. Although from what i can tell once it reaches a certain point it then starts moving back on itself, so its not going to keep on going south until it sets!

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True, true.

I must get out sometime tonight and observe, haven't done so for over a month due to laziness and loss of motivation. Trouble is I have now idea of Vesta's current position and it doesn't help that my PC won't run Stellarium at all, the graphics are buggy and it is extremely slow to respond. My new laptop ran it fine but that now has a deceased HDD and is awaiting collection by Curry's.

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Update: just went outside with the binocs after getting Stellarium to run at last, albeit with garbled text, and finding out that Vesta is only 4 degree above the horizon and thus blocked by houses. I'll have to wait until it lies due south and between two houses which allows a view down to under 10 degrees elevation.

On another note I looked down through the gap in the house and saw the Lagoon Nebula plain as day through the murk of the whole of Crewe. Three or four stars in a horizontal line with a faint surrounding smudge of light, exactly as can be seen on the planetarium program. I even showed it to my mum standing at the front door, she could find the line of stars but can't hold the binoculars steady enough to reveal the nebula. I think now is the time to invest in a decent tripod and mounting bracket :)

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You've tempted me to have a look for the lagoon myself now! I can use my 15x70's ok for short durations but a tripod is definitely required for longer sessions, my tripod is quite flimsy and the plastic mount that came with the binos doesn't help matters!

Going back to Vesta, i have a question which may sound completely stupid but I shall ask anyway, when you say its only 4 degrees above the horizon from your location, did you mean at that particular time you went to observe it, or is that as high as it gets from Crewe? now heres the really daft question regarding latitudes and degrees, i looked at the latitude of Crewe and it says 53 degrees N, I am at 50 degrees north so does that mean that all objects are 3 degrees lower in the sky for you? that seems logical to me but i think some people may find it funny that i should even ask such a thing! Im sure is higher than 10 degrees from my location (when Capricornus is at its highest) so it must reach higher than 4 degrees for you, thats why i think you meant at the time you attempted to see it. I have just this minute had a quick look at it!

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regarding stellarium, i had the problem to on my old computer, it was all working fine one until one day it started playing funny games, with the garbled text, slow response and flickering between my desktop and the stellarium window whenever i moved the cursor, not long after that the pc pretty much went kaput on me, endless BSOD's and all kind warning messages it pretty much died on me and my freind who built it for me couldnt even get it to boot properly so in the end he jjst made me another pc, He seemd to think that it was caused by stellarium, as it was only after that started playing up when i started getting other problems, he said it did not seem to work well on windows 7 64 bit which is what i was using (and still am) so this time i found out about XP mode and tried to use it on that, and guess what, it still doesnt run properly even in XP mode, its just so annoyingly slow so in the end i just deleted stellarium. which i really did not want to do as it is an excellent program when it works.

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Most amazing thing about Vesta at the moment, is that we have just put a satellite into orbit around it ("we" as in humans, not stargazerslounge). I was looking at the old hubble photos of it, compared to the new photo taken as the satellite was about to drop into orbit. Such a massive step in quality. Cannot wait to see what else we can see, and then the same with Ceres in a few years time.

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Indeed, the latest images are fantastic! I was thinking about DAWN when i was observing Vesta, kinda gave me a a buzz to know that tiny speck of light i was looking at had something man made orbiting around it!

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You've tempted me to have a look for the lagoon myself now! I can use my 15x70's ok for short durations but a tripod is definitely required for longer sessions, my tripod is quite flimsy and the plastic mount that came with the binos doesn't help matters!

Going back to Vesta, i have a question which may sound completely stupid but I shall ask anyway, when you say its only 4 degrees above the horizon from your location, did you mean at that particular time you went to observe it, or is that as high as it gets from Crewe? now heres the really daft question regarding latitudes and degrees, i looked at the latitude of Crewe and it says 53 degrees N, I am at 50 degrees north so does that mean that all objects are 3 degrees lower in the sky for you? that seems logical to me but i think some people may find it funny that i should even ask such a thing! Im sure is higher than 10 degrees from my location (when Capricornus is at its highest) so it must reach higher than 4 degrees for you, thats why i think you meant at the time you attempted to see it. I have just this minute had a quick look at it!

I believe your right about objects in the South being 3 degrees lower for me than you at 50 degrees.

RE: Vesta, it was 4 degrees in altitude at the time of posting and IIRC it only rises to 12 degrees at culmination, which was sometime after midnight. Due it's low alt I will have to wait until it lies due south in the gap in the houses where I observed the Lagoon. I will attempt tonigth if I can fend off tiredness and the need to be up at 6:30!

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