A night full of rocks

[David Smith]

First really good, long session in ages last night. Weather was pretty poor here until about 23:00 when all of a sudden the rain stopped and the sky cleared.

I started the session off by tracking down comet 168/p Hergenrother in Pegasus / Andromeda area. Comet was close to a 12th mag star making an interesting pairing. Looked to me to have a short, slightly curved tail.

I have been running the beginnings of a project over the last few sessions, hunting down asteroids with the 10 inch Dob and this looked like an ideal opportunity to add to my list of conquests. This was inspired after I found Pallas and Hygeia whilst hunting down Neptune and Uranus the other week. Suddenly I thought there are a lot of asteroids out there and I have only seen a handful of them once or twice. So over the next couple of sessions I tracked down a few more....

71 Niobe

72 Feronia

51 Nemausa

11 Parthenope

56 Melete

79 Eurynome

all of which were located using Skycharts. A quick look at Skycharts showed that there were a couple of asteroids not far from my current location near alpha andromeda and so began a long night picking off faint rocks.....

779 Nina

980 Anacostia

85 Io

932 Hooveria

231 Vindabona

60 Echo

359 Georgia

492 Gismonda

I was particularly pleased with 231 Vindabona and 492 Gismonda as both are 13th mag +. I progressed from one to the next hopping around using a combination of the 9x50 finder, rdf and the Revelation 32mm plossl. I was able to see many of them in the 32mm plossl but the really faint ones ( fainter than 12th mag) required the use of my ES 11 to confirm that I had indeed seen them. All of a sudden it was after 3am local time!

Previous to this session I had considered anything fainter than mag 11.x to be out of reach with my scope / local lighting conditions but last nights session pushes those boudaries back somewhat. Whilst looking at some of these objects I was seeing field stars at mag 14.5 ish according to Skycharts. Skycharts has a seemingly endless supply of these chunks of rock for me to hunt down so should keep me busy for a while.

Finished the session off with a look at M42 which was high in the south and then a look at Jupiter. The latter was most impressive as it was higher in the sky than I have seen it for a few years now and the seeing was very good. My ES11 eyepiece in combination with my Revelation 2" ED barlow and Baader neodymium filter made for a spectacular view of the cloud belts. stopped to make a sketch of this before shutting up shop for the night.

By which time it was 4 am and definitely time for bed!

[andrew63]

That's a very interesting read, thanks - and a nice collection of rocks indeed! Andrew

[rory]

wow, impressive,well done sir.

[Double Kick Drum]

That is some effort to i.d. so many in one night.

I have only found three (6 - Hebe, 12 - Victoria and 15 - Eunomia) to date but 1 - Ceres, 2 - Pallas, 4 - Vesta and 9 - Metis are all favourable over the next couple of months or so.

Thanks for sharing.

[David Smith]

Kicked myself this morning for missing Ceres which would have been well placed this morning.

Past experience tells me you quite often have to sketch the field of an asteroid and then come back to it a few days later to "confirm the kill", but most of these were in the sparse star fields of Pisces which allowed me to positively id the target without the need to sketch and return.

[John]

What a great report and a super "haul" of asteroids

I think I've only ever seen one or two of these objects - I must make more effort to track some down. From my back garden I've not been able to see below around magnitude 13.5 so far with my 10" Orion Optics newtonian. I guess that still gives some possibilities regarding asteroid viewing though ?.

Congratulations on the comet too

[David Smith]

Absolutely John, many of those listed above are around the 11th magnitude mark.

[m_j_lyons]

Very interesting post...I've never considered chasing left over planetary material...but you may have just motivated me to give it a whirl.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Very impressive collection of rocks!