Asteroid 2002 AM31 flyby and animation

[lukebl]

Hi all,

Not been imaging for a very long time, it seems. As some on this forum will know, I'm been hit by the bombshell of a horrible untreatable 'life-limiting' disease diagnosed for my other half, which put my astronomy way on the back burner. I even started to sell all my kit off, thinking I'd never feel the buzz again (and after 40 years into the hobby) nor have the time. One or two members sent me some very kind words (many thanks, particularly, Scarlet) and, fortunately, my CCD didn't sell and well, here I am again! Anyhoo, enough of my woes.

As my return, I had a go at imaging the near-earth asteroid 2002 AM31 last night, which is currently on a close approach streaking thorugh Cepheus, at a distance of around 14 Lunar distances. I've always had a thing about these objects. It's about a kilometre across, so not nice if it came too close. These are captured with an SXVF-H9 cam and a 250mm f4.7 Newtonian. It is moving very fast as these animations show.

This is an enlargement of the field, using just 15-second exposures. It moved sufficiently in that time to form steaks even for such a short exposure.

And this is the result of a series of 6 x 120 second exposures, showing the movement even more dramatically. The field of view is about 30 arc-minutes across (about the width of the full moon).

This is a single frame of one of the 120 second exposures. No darks or flats. The guiding was a bit iffy, as I haven't checked the polar alignment on the pier for months. Anyway, it was nice to get out again after such a long time. Hope you like them.

[fwm891]

Love the animations Luke

[Dave]

Nice capture Luke.

I was tempted to have a bash at this last night, but couldn't get ephemerides for it quickly enough.

[rigelrigel100]

Very nice Luke!

I used the Slooh Space Camera telescope in the Canary Islands last night to create this time-lapse movie of the Potentially Hazardous Asteroid "153958 (2002 AM31)" as it made its closest approach to Earth.

It's made up of over sixty individual images, and I've annotated the movie with additional information about the asteroid.

It's here: http://goo.gl/DmjMe

Unfortunately there was a bank of haze that came over during the image set, so some of the frames are quite noisy.

Paul