Pluto... Just!

[Paul M]

The sky didn't look so bad to the south even though the nearly full Moon was just a few degrees away from my target, Pluto!

I took 50 x 30 sec binned 2x2 with my ASI 071 through the 250 PDS. Really dreadful gradients all over the place. Only 11 of the 50 subs would stack in DSS. The stars were only just above the skyglow!

Anyway, some cropping and and use of AstroFlatPro in PS recovered something from the data. Annotated by ASTAP. 

Another couple of asteroids were annotated but don't really show in this rendition. I could pick out Nata in a more aggressive processing run I tried first but it was an ugly image. 

[Rallemikken]

Nice, lucky you. I live at 65°N. This year Pluto will not rise above 3°. It will not rise high enough to image from my obsy for 100 years or so.  So no Pluto for me.

[Paul M]

5 minutes ago, Rallemikken said:

Nice, lucky you. I live at 65°N. This year Pluto will not rise above 3°. It will not rise high enough to image from my obsy for 100 years or so.  So no Pluto for me.

Well, really, other than ticking the Pluto box, you aren't missing much!

[morimarty]

You have done really well Paul in picking out Pluto. Especially shooting towards a near full moon. Pluto must be around Mag14 and the sky glow was horrendous in that region so very well done.

[MKHACHFE]

Wow. Great job mate and better (as in you actually succeeded) than my attempts last year. Kudos to you! 😀

[Paul M]

This thread must have been given a poke. I've had a load of Likes over the weekend which is greatly appreciated. I can't believe I didn't get back to Pluto under better conditions this year. I'd love to create an animation of Pluto's motion over a number nights. Imagine that, consecutive clear nights in the UK! 

So... I mentioned the 2 asteroids in the same field but not being visible. I see that Nata is indeed there, plain as day with a short but distinct trail.

Capturing asteroids is one of my favorite aspects of imaging. Even when asteroids and Dwarf Planets (sorry Pluto) aren't on the menu I always run my images through ASTAP's asteroid annotation tool to see if any snook in

[Pete Presland]

On 16/10/2022 at 18:21, Paul M said:

This thread must have been given a poke. I've had a load of Likes over the weekend which is greatly appreciated. I can't believe I didn't get back to Pluto under better conditions this year. I'd love to create an animation of Pluto's motion over a number nights. Imagine that, consecutive clear nights in the UK! 

So... I mentioned the 2 asteroids in the same field but not being visible. I see that Nata is indeed there, plain as day with a short but distinct trail.

Capturing asteroids is one of my favorite aspects of imaging. Even when asteroids and Dwarf Planets (sorry Pluto) aren't on the menu I always run my images through ASTAP's asteroid annotation tool to see if any snook in

Here is another poke, great capture Paul. Pluto will always feel like a planet to me, whatever its classification. 🙂 

[Paul M]

35 minutes ago, Pete Presland said:

Here is another poke, great capture Paul. Pluto will always feel like a planet to me, whatever its classification. 🙂 

I'm in the Pluto=Planet camp too. But these days one has to be cautious for fear of being cancelled for being "wrong" on the internet by some arbitary clasification. 😇