Who framed Pluto?

[paulobao]

Hello dear Stargazers,

I took the last 4 nights to make some astrometric measures of a few Minor Planets and I grabed a few photons for astrophoto too . But that will come later!

For the topic: "Who framed Pluto?" by paulo lobao!

As everyone knows, after the discovery of Eris (the "10th planet") in 2005 at the Palomar Observatory by Mike Brown's team ,and because it is larger than Pluto, the IAU was forced to redefine the planet concept, placing both Pluto and Eris (and others that followed) in the dwarf planet category! And so Pluto where no longer the most distant "planet" of the solar system but only the second larger dwarf planet of the SS (Eris beeing the first known to date).

It is noteworthy that (136 199) Eris is at almost twice the distance from the Sun that (134 340) Pluto: 97.56 AU against "only" 49.30 AU for Pluto!

So here's the puzzle (all images made with C9.25 @ f/6.3 + QSI532WS):

Animated Gif 1 - 2010-09-09 for 20 min

Except the hot pixels and cosmic rays nothing moves !

Animated Gif 2 - 2010-09-10 for 25 min

You may see asteroid (84416) 2002 TU195 at mag 18.6 moving near PGC6250 and nothing else moving!

Animated Gif 3 2010-09-11 for 30 min

You may see again asteroid (84416) 2002 TU195 at mag 18.6 moving after a 24 hour travel from last night acquisition and as usual...nothing else moving!

So then you ask: what does this have to do with the subject???

I will answer you: has everything to do with the subject

Eris is present and visible in all the animated Gifs ! But since it is so far from us (at about 95.8 AU at the acquisition dates) we cannot detect any motion is such a relative short time (30 min). Note that asteroid (84416) 2002 TU195 is at about the same magnitude but it is 60x closer from us!).

Humm, really ?

Here Animated Gif 4, made with the median of each of the previous Gifs.

Now you may go to Gif 1, Gif 2 and Gif 3 and locate Eris, the Dwarf Planet that framed Pluto .

I hope not being too annoying this time!

Cheers,

paulo

[Worzsel]

Not annoying at all.. AMAZING!

well done

[Hypernova]

Very nice set of images there, you don't get to see images of Eris very often.

[Demon Science]

Hey, that's wonderful! Is that your own equipment? (if you don't mind the inquiry)

[Doug]

Eris is mag 19.2 and you have picked it out How good are you WOW, hope you do more work like this and show us all ,love it

well done Paul

Doug

Essex

[paulobao]

Thanks.

Yes it is my own equipment and it is the usual one: C9.25 + FR + QSI532WS-M1 and a Clear filter. OAG + Loadstar. Atlas mount used.

Regards,

paulo

[NickH]

Excellent...Mike Brown himself would be proud of that!

[msinclairinork]

Thats really cool! well done!

Michael

[Midpoint]

I love seeing things like this, I quite often find them more fascinating than regular images. Maybe it's the forensic work you need to do to prove that you have actually taken a picture of something that makes it feel more accomplished

Thanks very much for sharing.

[paulobao]

Thanks all to stop by and for the compliments :-).

Here the more scientific approach of all those frames : the report sent to the MPC with the astrometric reduction of both (136199) Eris and (84416) 2002 TU195.

COD J15

CON Obervatorio Muxagata, **************** Muxagata VNF, Portugal [my email@sapo.pt]

OBS P. Lobao

MEA P. Lobao

TEL 0.23-m f/6.3 Schmidt-Cassegrain + CCD

ACK MPCReport file updated 2010.09.11 17:32:49

AC2 my email @ sapo.pt

NET CMC-14

84416 C2010 09 10.12769 01 41 46.36 -04 11 40.2 18.7 r J15

84416 C2010 09 10.13133 01 41 46.23 -04 11 40.9 18.9 r J15

84416 C2010 09 10.13498 01 41 46.12 -04 11 41.5 19.1 r J15

84416 C2010 09 10.13862 01 41 46.01 -04 11 42.3 19.1 r J15

84416 C2010 09 10.14228 01 41 45.86 -04 11 43.1 18.9 r J15

84416 C2010 09 10.14593 01 41 45.75 -04 11 43.6 19.0 r J15

84416 C2010 09 11.12409 01 41 12.66 -04 14 26.6 18.2 r J15

84416 C2010 09 11.12774 01 41 12.52 -04 14 27.4 18.6 r J15

84416 C2010 09 11.13139 01 41 12.41 -04 14 27.6 18.6 r J15

84416 C2010 09 11.13503 01 41 12.28 -04 14 28.5 19.0 r J15

84416 C2010 09 11.13868 01 41 12.21 -04 14 29.3 19.2 r J15

84416 C2010 09 11.14234 01 41 11.97 -04 14 29.6 18.6 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 09.07858 01 41 11.15 -04 10 12.6 18.4 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 09.08223 01 41 11.11 -04 10 12.4 18.3 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 09.08588 01 41 11.17 -04 10 13.6 18.7 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 09.08954 01 41 11.15 -04 10 12.8 18.5 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 10.12769 01 41 09.41 -04 10 26.6 18.9 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 10.13133 01 41 09.38 -04 10 26.6 18.9 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 10.13498 01 41 09.39 -04 10 26.9 18.7 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 10.13862 01 41 09.36 -04 10 26.8 18.8 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 10.14228 01 41 09.36 -04 10 26.8 18.5 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 10.14593 01 41 09.35 -04 10 26.9 18.5 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 11.12409 01 41 07.65 -04 10 40.1 18.6 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 11.12774 01 41 07.69 -04 10 39.6 18.9 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 11.13139 01 41 07.68 -04 10 40.1 18.5 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 11.13503 01 41 07.68 -04 10 39.9 18.8 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 11.13868 01 41 07.64 -04 10 39.7 18.8 r J15

D6199 C2010 09 11.14234 01 41 07.65 -04 10 39.5 18.5 r J15

----- end -----

These data are of interest to the Minor Planet Center for correcting the orbit of celestial bodies and it is a small contribution that we poor amateur astronomers can make to astronomic science!

And I can tell you that the calculated orbit of (84416) 2002 TU195 involves a considerable error as you may see here (the red square indicates the MPC calculated position and the pink circle indicates the actual position captured by me). For Eris the calculated and actual are perfectly coincident! The green circles indicates the reference stars used for the astrometric reduction (this is a 100% crop...there were about 2000 matchs for reference stars!)

Cheers,

paulo

[iamjulian]

Have to agree, I'd take images like this over the familiar galaxies any day.

Very nice work Paulo

[NickH]

Yup, Astrometrica has been a real fave of mine for the past 6 months

Great stuff!

[adamsp123]

A very nice piece of work Paulo

[glennbech]

Mind boggeling! :-)

[laurele]

The IAU was not forced to do anything, and Pluto is not a minor planet. Only four percent of the IAU voted on this, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed in a formal petition by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader planet definition that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body in orbit around a star. The spherical part is important because objects become spherical when they attain a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning they are large enough for their own gravity to pull them into a round shape. This is a characteristic of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects. Pluto meets this criterion and is therefore a planet. Under this definition, our solar system has 13 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.