https://observatory.site/gallery/Cer...a_20190622.gif
Shown in this animation is the movement of Ceres over 8 hours, on the night of 4th June 2019, as it passed by the outer edge of IC4592, the Blue Horsehead Nebula.
I spent quite a bit of time planning and waiting for this shot, both on nights Ceres was near the nebula, and later in the month, so I could cancel it out in the image stack. I wanted to show the movement in a wide-field color animation, rather than the usual high zoom black & white.
With a diameter of 945km, the dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Image:
- 64x 300s Luminance
- 25x 150s Red
- 26x 150s Green
- 32x 150s Blue
Total integration 8 hours 48 minutes.
Hardware:
- Skywatcher Black Diamond 80ED
- Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount
- QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
- Astronomik Luminance, Deep Sky RGB filters
- Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
- Starlight Xpress Active Optics
- Innovations Foresight On Axis Guider
- Starlight Instruments Focus Boss II
Location:
- Exposed during 4 nights between 4th June and 12th June 2019.
- Orange zone in Brisbane, Australia. (Bortle 7)