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First Asteroid - Pallas


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I had a go at capturing an asteroid last week, and I was surprised at how easy it was.  I didn't really understand that at Mag 9, it is fairly bright.

It is moving very slowly (7" per hour), so  imaged it over at least two nights to be sure that I had actually captured it - and then had a third go.  The middle frame has fewer stars because it was cloudy. 

It clouded over as I was setting up, and I tried a shot just for the hell of it.  Presumably the cloud was very thin, but I couldn't see any stars with the naked eye!

This gif is composed of three frames.  Each frame is 6 x 30s stacked subs, binned 2x2.  Guiding was not needed.  My gut feeling is that this would look quite good shot at a much shorter focal length.

Camera: STL6303,

Scope:   Tal200k  (f/l 2010mm)

Mount:  EQ6

Total exposure  9 minutes

Dark calibrated in CCDStack and processed in the Gimp.

 

 

Pallas3.gif

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Great first "tracking" asteroid pic. Just one word of warning ... this sort of thing can be quite addictive ...

One of my favourite exercises was imaging Neptune & Triton (with a 4" achro) with a three-day gap, showing the speed of Triton's orbit and the distance travelled by the pair.

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9 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

Great first "tracking" asteroid pic. Just one word of warning ... this sort of thing can be quite addictive ...

One of my favourite exercises was imaging Neptune & Triton (with a 4" achro) with a three-day gap, showing the speed of Triton's orbit and the distance travelled by the pair.

I fear that you might be right about the "addictive" part.  I've already looked up Ceres.  It's a bit low from here, but I might have a go with a DSLR in Spain in the not too distant future.  If nothing else, it will be an interesting technical exercise.

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