Asteroid 2012 QG42

[Breakintheclouds]

In case anybody finds it interesting, here is a stack of 90-something 14-second exposures from last night. The asteroid is moving at an apparent speed of over 9" per minute; this series was taken over about 37 minutes and the image is about 20' across.

Sadly my internet connection went crazy last night (thanks a bunch, Virgin Media!) which put my computer's clock out of whack and meant my astrometric measurements were faulty. So as these images had no value for tracking the asteroid, I thought we could at least look at them and think about asteroids...

[allcart]

fascinating. How the hell did you find it. By accident or design?

[JamesF]

I was wondering that myself

James

[Breakintheclouds]

By design! These days a lot of my astronomy is trying to measure asteroid movements (see the link in my signature). This one is flagged as a recent discovery that appears to be close to Earth, so it's quite a high priority target for more measurements.

[GlassWalker]

Always amazing what's out there if you look for it.

As for accurate timekeeping, why rely on the internet connection? How about getting a GPS dongle? What level of accuracy is required to be useful anyway?

[Breakintheclouds]

It needs accuracy of a second or better. Generally, it's fine - I use Dimension4, which constantly checks the clock and adjusts it to the right time. I do have a GPS dongle, but am not sure how I'd use that to keep the system clock adjusted. If you know, I'd be glad to learn.

[JamesF]

Is there an NTP client for windows? That would be a simple way to keep the clock spot-on.

James

[Breakintheclouds]

James,

Yes, that's what Dimension4 does. I think last night the problem was that it got confused with my internet connection going down and messed things up - there's a spike in its history graph

[GlassWalker]

I may have overstretched myself there, as while I know you can use accurate GPS time, I'm not familiar with what specific software is available to do that for you. Need to play with my dongle more too!

[Breakintheclouds]

An update! Thanks to the comments here I spent some time yesterday thinking about my timing issues and have now ditched Dimension4 in favour of NTP to keep my computer's clock accurate. This seems to have worked really well. Not only does www.time.is report my clock as spot-on, but last night's asteroid hunting produced really great measurements.

Here are two more images of 2012 QG42 from last night then. It's moving even faster in the sky now so the first shows a big stack of 8-second subs; the second picture is an animation of the asteroid's movements over the same time period

[Astroegg]

Why not use the Atomic Clock for synchronisation? There is a company that specialise in providing solutions (Galleon Systems) for this or you can build your own from components for a cheaper alternative.

[Breakintheclouds]

Astroegg: I hadn't thought of that. That's certainly something for me to consider .

But I have to say that at least for now, JamesF's NTP suggestion was a good one too. My timing seems to be excellent with the NTP software.