Asteroid 3122 Florence

[mdstuart 1,856]

It's closing in on the bottom of those two stars...40 mins to get there I think..

Fascinating..

So if we compare the view in say Russia and here maybe we can work out the distance using trigonometry!

Mark

[DavidJM 158]

Just a tiny bit jealous that I'm under clouds, still hoping for a gap

[harrym 113]

1 hour ago, SilverAstro said:

How often does MPC change the elements ?

I was expecting that, but did not notice any change in my Stellarium when I updated last night, hence wondering about Stellarium truncating last dec. places or other precision field limiting artifices ?

What's important is the epoch of the elements - the date on which they are exactly correct. I'm not sure how often this gets updated but the current MPC orbits are using an epoch of 4 September so it's obviously not daily.

Still no gaps in the clouds

Edited August 31, 2017 by harrym

[Stu 29,815]

Packed in now but had a good view of it. Agreed re position, I watched it pass a mag 10.7 star TYC 5196-1143-1 then called it a night. Slow but obvious progress, great to see.

Mag estimates seem about right, around 8.5 is that correct?

I had it nicely in the Tak, first off with a 24mm Panoptic then a 12.5mm BGO. No chance even in the 80mm Finder though.

SkySafari initially had two entries for it, both wrong and then just one after I updated, again wrong. One of the initial wrong ones was close enough to let me find it though so can't complain. As John said, it was actually quite easy to pick up the movement even though it is quite slow.

Thanks to all who posted for the inspiration to get out there and have a look!

[David Levi 587]

I'm looking at Florence now. It's amazing to see it moving. If you wanted to be boring you could say that it was just like watching a slow satellite. But it's not a satellite it's a near earth asteroid and pretty fantastic it is to see it travel in front of your eyes.

Stellarium seems to have it's position accurate.

Edited September 1, 2017 by David Levi

[goodricke1 329]

On 31/08/2017 at 16:47, WaveSoarer said:

I think that you'll be ok with the moon goodrick1. Florence was easy to spot with my 200p last night and I might have a go with the 100p tonight if it's clear.

Yes, lovely clear skies here last night Wavesoarer and I bagged it. Here are two images 11 mins apart showing it closing in on that mag 7 star, although I was faffing around with lenses and missed closest approach... Around mag 8.8 I estimate, and I spared a thought for the dinosaurs who were wiped out by one of its cousins -

[WaveSoarer 440]

That's great goodricke1. I'm glad that you managed to get clear skies.

[Stu 29,815]

On 31/08/2017 at 22:53, andrew63 said:

Stu - I should have mentioned it a few days ago - sky safari is a bit  off !   About 4 degrees off !!

 

andrew

I was going to ask about this on the SS support forum but somebody beat me to it. They have added another entry with the most up to date orbital data (apparently deleting the existing Ines requires a full update). The correct entry is now called (3122) Florence_latest, the third entry in this list.

[WaveSoarer 440]

I've just been out with my 100p and I could easily see Florence with the 15 mm EP. The moon is making the sky distinctly milky but I could see it sweep past a mag 10.25 star despite this. Apart from the distraction of a cute little hedgehog it was good to watch it drift across the field stars for about an hour.

[DavidJM 158]

Success! Same with 100p and 15mm EP, after yesterdays cloudy sky happy to see my first major event, love this hobby!

 

[Stu 29,815]

6 hours ago, DavidJM said:

Success! Same with 100p and 15mm EP, after yesterdays cloudy sky happy to see my first major event, love this hobby!

 

Well done David  

[andrew63 1,435]

Thanks Stu - now updated and is looking much better!   

Glad a few people got to view it - it's been a good few weeks along with bright Nova Scutum also.

andrew

[WaveSoarer 440]

Well done David. It was fairly tricky star hopping and a lot of toing and froing between the EP and Stellarium.

[Nyctimene 1,419]

Spotted 3122 Florence yesterday evening, using the 8" f/4 Hofheim dob with the Maxvision 24/82°. After a tedious starhop (moon, thin haze) from "Job's coffin" (the Dolphin's body) and with the help of SkySafari and a S+T map, I observed it slowly approaching the 9 mag pair SAO 126370 and 126374. The change of it's position could clearly be made out within 3-4 min, using 67x mag (Baader Zoom). (Not to compare to asteroid 2014 JO 25 April 19th - 3°/h!). Nice sight.

Stephan

[SilverAstro 3,056]

19 minutes ago, Nyctimene said:

"Job's coffin" (the Dolphin's body)

Yes quite tricky last night when she was in "empty"(!) sky. Very interesting tonight though as she crosses that bit of Delphinus, lots of photo ops as well I think. This is the bit I have been looking forward to , , , except, guess what, wall-to-wall sunshine here now, 4cast for cloud tonight, grrrr

Here is a quick grab of it from Stellarium, midnight BST highlight, yellow markers 1hr interval from 22:00BST

[DavidJM 158]

49 minutes ago, Nyctimene said:

Spotted 3122 Florence yesterday evening, using the 8" f/4 Hofheim dob with the Maxvision 24/82°. After a tedious starhop (moon, thin haze) from "Job's coffin" (the Dolphin's body) and with the help of SkySafari and a S+T map, I observed it slowly approaching the 9 mag pair SAO 126370 and 126374. The change of it's position could clearly be made out within 3-4 min, using 67x mag (Baader Zoom). (Not to compare to asteroid 2014 JO 25 April 19th - 3°/h!). Nice sight.

Stephan

Never heard "Job's coffin" before

[AKB 1,189]

On 8/31/2017 at 23:14, andrew63 said:

Astronomy is like quality street

So astronomy, as well as life, is like a box of chocolates.

[Nyctimene 1,419]

14 minutes ago, DavidJM said:

Never heard "Job's coffin" before

David JM,

it's an asterism's name, that has made it's way even in modern astro software, e.g. SkySafari. It's origin and meaning, AFAIK, is unknown and lost in the deep of history (--or is someone out there with more knowledge --??). It's use seems to be limited to the English speaking regions; never heard of it here in Germany.

Stephan

[SilverAstro 3,056]

>> quality street

> box of chocolates

I think a bunch of garlic or handfull of cloves of garlic, would be of more use to the wannabe UK astronomer, to ward off evil cloudSpirits

> Job's coffin

but in the english (well protestant english at least !) book it was a whale wot got 'im, yea I know, taxonomically ,,, shhhh ,,,,   So I'm going to continue with the un-dissected beast

[Nyctimene 1,419]

13 minutes ago, Nyctimene said:

David JM,

it's an asterism's name, that has made it's way even in modern astro software, e.g. SkySafari. It's origin and meaning, AFAIK, is unknown and lost in the deep of history (--or is someone out there with more knowledge --??). It's use seems to be limited to the English speaking regions; never heard of it here in Germany.

Stephan

I've just looked up the Coffin in Walter Scott Houston's "Deep Sky Wonders" (p. 188). WSH mentions, that the moniker's origin is unknown even to star name expert Richard C. Allen. The term appears first in Elijah H. Burrit's "Geography of the Heavens", published in the 1830s.

[DavidJM 158]

25 minutes ago, Nyctimene said:

I've just looked up the Coffin in Walter Scott Houston's "Deep Sky Wonders" (p. 188). WSH mentions, that the moniker's origin is unknown even to star name expert Richard C. Allen. The term appears first in Elijah H. Burrit's "Geography of the Heavens", published in the 1830s.

You learn something everyday, like switching on asterisms in sky safari☺

[SilverAstro 3,056]

No Sky Safari here !

I still think it looks like a particular species of whale,, beginning with S (Physeter macrocephalus) iyswim

[SilverAstro 3,056]

Such an educating influence is SGL ! I've been reading up on "Dolphin", wondered if Job and the Whale tale might have been one of Constantine's mis-alliterations from the Greek or Hebrew,  and Lo!  with the undoubted authority of wiki we get :-

The name is originally from Greek δελφίς (delphís), "dolphin", which was related to the Greek δελφύς (delphus), "womb". The animal's name can therefore be interpreted as meaning "a 'fish' with a womb".

Who forgot that a whale is not a fish.

So it should be Job in the Womb  (not sure about Job's Womb cos he's a bloke, but how does one assign an apostrophe to denote his possessing of a current abode/location in this case which is not quite like him having a coffin ? )

Sorry, I think we need a topic split !

[SilverAstro 3,056]

26 minutes ago, SilverAstro said:

Who forgot that a whale is not a fish.

Oooops, clang, it was me that forgot that Linnaeus (and his penchant for binomialy classifying things) was not around in the time of the Greeks !

[Nyctimene 1,419]

22 hours ago, SilverAstro said:

The name is originally from Greek δελφίς (delphís), "dolphin", which was related to the Greek δελφύς (delphus), "womb".

Silver Astro,

My dictionary of Latin-Greek terms in biosciences names both "delphis" and "delphus", and their meanings as you quoted above ("delphus"= uterus and vagina), but does not mention any connection between them; there  seems to be also no common word root "delph--"; so I'm not quite sure about  this relation.

Stephan

Edited September 3, 2017 by Nyctimene