Asteroid transit of Pleiades

[physicus]

Catching what turned out to be this named asteroid (2947 Kippenhahn) passing through the Pleiades over two days was totally accidental, and probably not a big deal for regular asteroid-tracking types.  But, given the absolutely dreadful weather we're suffering in the UK at the mo', reviewing these data from 6th and 8th November is the nearest I've got to astrophotographic fun this month. 

The lower capture is 2 x 1200s luminance on 6/11/15, and the upper from 8/11/15 is the RGB - hence three coloured dots - at 6 x 300s each, except for the Blue where mist shortened play.   I've checked the Kippenhahn position out on Cartes du Ciel, but interestingly there's something else going on in the later frame: some Green-Blue action visible at the 4 o'clock to the upper Kippenhahn capture; what's that all about?  Anyhow, that's a 14th Mag. asteroid about the same distance from us as the Sun; and the Luminance streek in the 6/11 instance represents movement of 53,000 km at that distance.  None of this is likely to change our lives (unless the green-blue guy is heading our way) - but it does all give a sense of relative movement and scale.

Bit of a backstory to this.  Having acquired my first refractor, I'm a bit late in the day discovering one of the joys of separate guidescopes: flexure  (I've been OAG till now).  So those 1200s luminance exposures on the Pleiades represent only the 3rd outing of the new scope (Esprit 100) taken after a lot of angst that had me blaming everything from mount electronics to gravity waves.  Flexure is so weird and totally evil. 

(SW Esprit 100, Baader filters, 2 x1200s Lum.,  RG 6 x 300s B 2 x 300s)

Tim

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Some good detail in the nebulosity around the Pleiades and nice catch of that asteroid

[Paul73]

The new scope seems to be singing as well.

Looking forward to more images.

Paul

[Pete Presland]

That is a pretty cool capture, always nice to observe/image events like this. Like you have said they give a sense of motion and scale.

[laudropb]

Very nice image of Pleiades and a great capture of the asteroid.

[baggywrinkle]

Nicely done, I don't think we would have seen anything in Fenland unless it hit us!

[Astroscot2]

I bet you can find more asteroids on that image .

Mark

[sloz1664]

Super image. not usually cropped so close. I like it a lot.

steve

[T-WING]

Very nice noise free image! Fantastic, thanks for sharing.