A little bit of astrometry

[paulobao]

Greetings from portugal,

So I spent 4 whole nights awaked not only catching the WASP-3b and TrES-3b transits and the missing IC5070 narrowband layers.

I made some astrometry too. Astrometry is fun!

My first target was a NEO, 2001FE90 considered by the MPC a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA). It will miss earth by only 7 LD next 28th of June (it is a safe distance unless you planned your vacations to Mars that day !) when it will reach mag 13.

Here a GIF of it, with 60s subs. See how "fast" he goes (how close it is from us).

Here something intersting and it is why we should monitored these little rocks and send our reports to the MPC:

a - the astrometric reduction with an "old" (not that old) MPC orbital elements.

b - the astrometric reduction with an updated in the field (long live the mobile internet) MPC orbital elements. (here I used a stack to increase the SNR but the data are the same)

See those 2 colored boxes. The pink one give the real position with a precision less than a second (taken from my data) and the red one give the predicted position from the MPC. As you may see the predicted position changed from the not so old MPC orbital elements to new updated one because of new measures sent to the MPC from observatories around the world. Ok, now we know exactly where it is.

I would like to continue making this NEO astrometry but, unfortunatelly the wether got nasty. Wethar permits and I will get it here in center town.

I made more a bunch of astrometric measures for some comets.

Here 2 of them:

Comet C/2005 L3 (McNaught) :

and comet C/2006 W3 (Christensen)

I hope you have not bothered with this kind of little things that I like.

Cheers,

paulo (MPC J15, J11)

[Milamber]

Excellent - and worrying that the NEO asteroid data are not as accurate as we all think!

Arthru

[MeerkatinBKK]

That's incredible Paolo, thanks for sharing.

One of the great things about astronomy is that amateurs can - and do - contribute to serious astronomical study. It's good to know that you're helping to keep watch on those NEOs for us too. Obrigado!

I hope you'll continue to share your results with all of us here.

Nick

[ncjunk]

Fantastic information! I found that really interesting and the level of detail is great. I was reading another persons website on variable stars and astrometry...very interesting stuff all this.

Neil C

[ashenlight]

What a wonderful contribution Paolo, I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of that. Very interesting and very enjoyable

[Doc]

Amazing stuff and please keep posting it as I'm sure we are all very interested

[Imahumanbeing]

AWESOME Paulo and I love the animation! FANTASTIC!!

All the best

Jamie

[kev 102 42]

Your Astronomy Skills are Awesome Well Done..............kev

[paulobao]

Thank you all.

I'm happy that you find this an interesting subject.

Regards,

paulo

[iamjulian]

Great job Paulo!

I have followed a stable orbit meteor, would love to have a go at some NEOs. Very inspiring, thanks.

[albedo0.39]

Hey Paul - thanks for all that work - deeply impressive stuff.

You clearly live in another world of Astronomy which only goes to demonstrate just how many layers this hobby has. From "Turn Left at Orion" to plotting asteroids using imaging techniques.

Thanks again

[ron.s.g]

great work and thank you for sharing, just shows whats really going on around us.

regards ron.s.g